psalmthing to chew on: psalm 3

continuing my journey of reading through the psalms at a leisurely pace, making some observations as i go along, inviting you to jump in to the comments section with a verse or idea or question or wrestle that possibly jumped out at you as you were reading this particular psalm:

PSALM 3

‘Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.” But…’ [verse 2]

i think this stood out for me and possibly not for the same reasons the psalmist intended, but really the sense of a lot of people around him looking at his belief in God and ridiculing it or disregarding it and kind of writing it off… followed by this giant BUT.

As in, people around me may not think there is much significance in the God i serve or call out to or worship, but i have experienced it differently and i trust that my God will come through for me.

that followed by the beginning of verse 5 which interestingly reads, ‘I lie down and sleep’ which, for those who know me, may not seem like a verse i would rush to as sleep has not been a big theme of the recent years of my life… but it stands out because you have this guy who seems like he is on his own and he is crying out to God and yet there is this sense of confidence that when he lies down he will sleep. That speaks of his faith and trust in God and i really like that. Reminiscent of Psalm 23 and ‘though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for You are with me and Your staff and rod they comfort me.’

we serve a God who is real. and He is faithful. and that is exciting. and worth writing about and testifying to.

[To continue on to Psalm 4, click here]

[To return to the start of this series on Psalms or some other Bible things, click here]

why i believe that God is not faithfull

i was thinking about this the other day and it’s a pretty silly semantical thort but it was mine and that it was too. [eh hem]

and hopefully someone is already penning me an email [can one do that?] to tell me i spelt ‘faithful’ wrong, without reading the blog post [those are some of my favourite people] but actually that was the thort that ran thru my head the other day

God is faithful, for sure, i have no doubt of that and especially so after experiencing it [albeit on many 11 hour 56 minute occasions] many times the first half of this year, but He is not faith full as in full of faith, because God doesn’t need faith like we do.

Why not? Because He knows Himself. i think some dead english guy wrote the phrase “to thine own self be true” which is what God absolutely is. God cannot not be true to Himself. He is Love and Justice and Mercy and Grace and Faithfulness and Wisdom and all of those descriptors get a capital letter when speaking about Him because that is when they are at their absolute truest.

So God doesn’t need faith in Himself – hope that He will act in the way He should, because He is God and that is who He is and He will absolutely always act true to Himself and His character.

So God is definitely not faithfull. He doesn’t need any faith.

But what He is, is Trustworthy.

Which we have learnt from experiencing His faithfulness.

the beautiful val and i started the year trusting that the belief i had that God was wanting us to wait on Him for plans for this year was a valid one and so we waited and prayed and asked and answered other peoples questions using the phrase ‘i don’t know’ to good effect and then two possibilities came up – the Simple Way which we are doing and an internship [for tbV] with IJM [International Justice Mission] which we are not [at the moment anyway]. the process happened pretty smoothly and at the end of april we were invited to join the Simple Way in Philadelphia [those who have read ‘The Irresistible Revolution’ will know what it is, those who haven’t should!] for 19 months with val working in crisis management and emergency services and me being involved with the hospitality house which deals with people coming to check out the work and happenings of the Simple Way and hopefully some communications stuff as well.

which left us with the big 5 – getting someone to take over our apartment, selling both our cars, getting visas, buying air tickets and getting rid of our stuff [with a 6th one – paying off val study visa and car loan – lurking quietly in the background] which have now largely been taken care of thankx to incredible provision by God and people who love Him [and love us which is really cool] – getting no salaries from Feb [and then having the two salaries we were meant to get in April not arrive due to a clerical error] meant that we really had to trust God a lot that we were being obedient to what He had said – and sometimes literally the night before we needed money it would appear in our account, with no-one knowing that we needed it. The visas are on hold as we wait for some info from the Simple Way which we should get later today and it seems like we will get better ones than we were applying for. We were blown away by a gift from a good friend last nite that will allow us to, as val would say, punch number 6 in the face. So it is all looking good.

Did we triumphantly trust God the whole way with no doubting or second-guessing or getting ready to panic or stress or make a plan B? Absolutely not. We had moments of weakness and struggle and panic and doubt. But we continued to trust through it all and God, as always, continued to prove faithful and show us, in His perfect timing that He has us. And a lot of the time He did it through His church, the Christ-following people we are fortunate enuff to be in relationship with. And not always the ones we suspected it would be. We have been pleasantly surprised time and time again.

So God doesn’t need faith. Therefore He cannot be faithfull.
But God is trustworthy, not always in the ways we expect, and so He is absolutely faithful.
Church, when it works, is incredible.
and some other fourth thing…