July 29,2020
Wednesday PM
Psalm 95:1-11 Oh come, let us sing to the Lord!
Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;
Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.
3 For the Lord is the great God,
And the great King above all gods.
4 In His hand are the deep places of the earth;
The heights of the hills are His also.
5 The sea is His, for He made it;
And His hands formed the dry land.
6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
7 For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture,
And the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice:
8 “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion,
As in the day of trial in the wilderness,
9 When your fathers tested Me;
They tried Me, though they saw My work.
10 For forty years I was grieved with that generation,
And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts,
And they do not know My ways.’
11 So I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”
If people will take the time to worship privately, then when we come together publicly, we can go to a much higher place. Everything revolves round worship. It’s about who gets the worship, not gives it. Because we’re all worshiping something. It’s how we are made. We just want to make sure we are giving it to God.
There can be no praise or worship without expression. Thanks and thanks giving are two different things. Thanks has to be givenfor it to become thanksgiving. Worship keeps God in His place. And because of our human nature, it’s something we have to work on. Worship also keeps you in your place. In this Psalm, it instructs us to bow down or kneel. This can be a physical thing, or it can be an attitude of your heart and mind. Worship keeps God on top of everything. The highest and greatest in your life. It keeps you below Him, because you recognize your great need for Him. You can’t get through the day without Him. Your next breath is in His hands. Any person that don’t know that is blinded and prideful. Pride is the only sin that the devil won’t condemn you for. He doesn’t point that one out to you. Because he is the personification of pride. He didn’t want to worship, he wanted to be worshipped.
You’re never going to be joyful until you cultivate being thankful. Thankfulness is the quickest path to joy. There’s no in between for thankful and unthankful. You’re either one or the other. There is no neutral ground. If you aren’t being thankful, your unthankful. You have to cultivate being a thankful person.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Every day you have to get up and be thankful. If you aren’t thankful you won’t have joy like God wants you to have. There’s a place in God where you can enjoy being a Christian. There’s a place in God where you can smile and it’s real! In everything give thanks! In the midst of the good, bad, and ugly. You must be confident that you will come out on the other side and God will take care of you! Just because something bad happens to you, does not mean it has to define your life! It will if you let it. You’ve got to be thankful for everything.
The bible does not speak about being driven. But it does speak about being content. With being driven, when is enough enough? The bible teaches contentment even in material things. In John, it says to, “… be content with your wages.” As an American it’s hard to think that way. Don’t drive yourself to an early grave! It will affect you physically, emotionally, and spiritually. What good is life if you don’t make a difference for others?
Hebrews 13:15 15 Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.
Continually is the key word in this verse. We shouldn’t be murmuring and complaining! We should be continually thankful! You can’t be depressed and thankful at the same time. If you are depressed, become thankful, and it will leave you.
Psalm 95:8 “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion,
As in the day of trial in the wilderness,
Hard means difficult! If you harden your heart, you make life difficult for yourself and those around you! A person who always has to be right, will not have many friends. Worship will soften you. It will be like rain on a hard dirt clump. Worship prepares your heart to receive more from God. Worship will make you sweeter and nicer. It keeps your heart tender! Life will make you hard if you let it. Worship and thankfulness will reverse that hardness. God can use a tender heart! God wants to do things for you that you can’t even imagine, but when you don’t worship Him, you keep Him from doing that.