Psalm 40

Psalm 40 (ESV)
My Help and My Deliverer
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

1I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. 2He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog,and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. 3He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD.

4Blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust,who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie! 5You have multiplied, O LORD my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you!I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told.

6Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. 7Then I said, "Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: 8I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."

9I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation;behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD. 10I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.

11As for you, O LORD, you will not restrain your mercy from me;your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me! 12For evils have encompassed me beyond number;my iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see;they are more than the hairs of my head; my heart fails me.

13Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me! O LORD, make haste to help me! 14Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether who seek to snatch away my life;let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire my hurt! 15Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, "Aha, Aha!"

16But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you;may those who love your salvation say continually, "Great is the LORD!" 17As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me.You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God!

I have always found it most helpful when reading the Psalms to apply it very personally to myself...seeing the enemy as not something outside myself...but to see "those who seek my life" as the powers of darkness at work within my own soul--the battle against the flesh and every thing that attaches itself to me thru it. In so many ways attaining an enemy within is happens very naturally thru the experience of our life, even inherently in our cells and genes thru our ancestral line. The sins of the Fathers being visited upon the children. Part of the journey is simply (ha) a conscious turning away from sin and perhaps a bigger part is a process of discovery thru the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. Until we allow Him to shine His light into the very heart of our being the darkness conceals so much. And that is an ages old problem...that men loved darkness and would not come into the Light therefore they remained in condemnation.

John 3:17 17For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 18"He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.

Perhaps life is not so much about avoiding condemnation as it is about being saved out of condemnation by coming into the Light. Condemnation is not a future possibility as much as it is a present reality for those who avoid the Light. How often have we chosen the darkness of our own soul because we fear the Light. Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

Nelson Mandela Inaugural Speech, 1994

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fears, our presence automatically liberates others.

Amen Nelson!!!

The Lord has been saying to me lately "Take back the Land which the Lord has given you! Take a proactive stance against the enemy in your body." The Israelites were told to expel all the wicked nations that inhabited the land of Canaan. The same is true today of our personal "Canaan"; all the "wicked nations" need to be removed from our land. Preston Eby says "Heaven and Hell dwell within you." The powers of darkness need to be overcome in order to live in Heavenly Light. The enemy is a deceiver and often he is hidden even from our own eyes necessitating the Light of the Lord to expose him.

In ancient Israel problems continued because they compromised and did not completely destoy the wicked. Some were allowed to remain. Don't we do the same thing? We stop pursuing the Lord and get comfortable with the enemy in our land. We think "oh that little thing in my life isn't a big deal I don't need to deal with that." We compromise instead of running hard after the Lord. And often we are not even aware of the enemy it has become so familiar and has lived in our land for so many years.

Paul says something so profound in Romans 6:2 "How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?" Truth is we are not living in it...we are dying in sin...life only comes when we walk in Him.

Some one was sharing about Passover at our meeting on Sunday. She began by asking if anyone knew of a time in the past when sacrificial lambs saved lives. And then proceeded to tell us about the exodus from Egypt. During the last plague God required that each Israelite family slay a lamb and smear its blood on the doorposts of their houses so the angel of death would pass over. The doorposts of our house (our body) have been covered in the blood of "the" Passover Lamb so that the angel of death must also pass over us. Immediately the Israelites began packing their stuff to leave for the promised land. They had prepared unleavened bread, symbolic of a life without leaven (sin), to eat along the way. We are no different...when we are partaking of the Bread of Life who is Christ and running hard after God...He is also willing to part the Red Sea for us and lead us into the Promised Land. I find it so interesting that the Hebrew word Canaan means humiliated. Really the journey of coming into Canaan is all about humility...humbling ourselves. True humility is about laying down your life so completely that Christ can fully manifested in us. Our hope of glory is Christ in us! True humility is about accepting by faith the things that God speaks concerning us rather than maintaining that we know better than He does. Pride is a big stinker!!!

We are still trying to get a handle on faith. Still wrestling with the powers of darkness that prevent us from really accepting who we are in our Father's eyes. He says we are the righteousness of Christ and that we have been judged not according to our sin nature...but according to the righteousness of Christ. We have already been declared innocent in His sight. Go and take that thought with you to the bathroom mirror first thing in the morning and allow the truth and its reality to shape your perspective on life.

How indeed, can those who have died to sin and who now have His resurrection life living bodily in them, continue in it? Thanks Paul! We no longer have a sin issue (not that we don't still sin sometimes), that was taken care of at the cross...but we do still have a faith issue.