Friday 3 Jul 2015

July 3: Psalm 66:8-12

Key Verse: Psalm 66:12
You have caused men to ride over our heads; We went through fire and through water; But You brought us out to rich fulfilment.

Devotion:
No matter what happens in our lives we should be willing and able to worship God and praise Him for all He does and allows into our lives. Paul continued to tell others he was able to praise God even though he had been through so much and even done so much against God in the beginning. He did this because he knew it to be true after much experience!

The psalmist here encourages us all to praise God and to bless Him for all He allows into our lives. He admits God does allow hardships into our lives but qualifies them to say it is for our own betterment. How can we say this when it looks like we just get horrible things happening without the promise of release or any sign of the hardships letting up. When we study things a bit more closely we will see that God does not let us fall flat on our faces but rather gives us opportunity to grow through learning and through building up.

The psalmist describes it as if God does not allow our feet to falter even when we are going through the roughest patches. He extends this by describing how God uses the harsh times to make us stronger describing it in terms of us being refined in a fire. Just as a fish is cornered and cannot escape a fishing net, so we seem to get into trouble from which there seems to be no escape for us. Even through all of this, God remains with us!

What happens is that we learn from the hardships we go through – that is as long as we do listen to what happens and learn from what goes on around us. If we ignore the trials and just expect God to fix everything we are not gaining all He is giving to us. God does want us to learn about the bad things in life but wants us to come out stronger and richer than when we went into them. Trust God. Listen to God and grow stronger each step with Him.

Points to Ponder:
Do you blame God when things go wrong?

Do you ask God to show you how to learn?