Posted on by intentional4christ

To the very day!

Have you every stopped for a moment to wonder if God knows about everything happening in your life? What about the billions of people on earth? Is He concerned with everything in their lives as well? What if I told you that everything that is happening in your life has been predicted by God right down to the very day (even second)? Would you believe it?

In Genesis 15, God visited Abraham while he was childless and promised him a child out of his own loins who would be his heir. Abraham, very skeptical of this promise because of his age, asked God for a sign and God made a covenant with him and showed him what the future of his descendants would be. God told Abraham, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be a stranger in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions.”

Fast forward to Exodus 12, and we see God giving instructions to the Israelites through Moses to get out of Egypt. God delivered the Israelites from the hand of the Pharaoh with plagues that culminated with the death of every firstborn male person and cattle but not before they had plundered the Egyptians of gold and silver. For many of the Israelites, and certainly to the Egyptians, it may have just been another day of God working wonders but this was no ordinary day. It was a day that God had predicted to Abraham many years before right to the very day.

Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the LORD’s division left Egypt.

Exodus 12:40-41 NIV

Right to the every day… a day which may have started off as ordinary was not ordinary after all. It had been earmarked by God as a day of redemption and was very significant. God was not slow to keeping His promise of deliverance. It happened on the very day God had chosen for it, not a day before or a day after. Do you know that nothing that ever happens to you takes God by surprise? Do you know that even the mundaneness of our day have been foretold by God even before the day happens?

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all my days were written in Your book and ordained for me before one of them came to be.

Psalm 169:16 BSB

Sometimes it is easy to forget that nothing in our life is happenstance. Everything happens for a reason and if you are counted among God’s division, it happens for your good and for His glory sake. Everything about you, from your life’s first cry to final breath is laid bare before God and so nothing is a surprise for Him. This is very comforting particularly for me as I have been asking God what the next steps of my life ought to be. If you are praying for direction for one aspect of your life or another, may you be encouraged by these words, knowing that God’s counsel will never lead you astray because He knows how everything will turn out right to the very day! May this be your confidence as you:

Trust in the lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Instead, seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take.

Proverbs 3:5-6 BSB, NLT

Yours Truly

Posted on by intentional4christ

A Psalm to God

Do you have a favorite psalm that is your go-to scripture? Is there a psalm that you most identify with? Is there a psalm that seemed to capture the very essence of what you were feeling at a point in time?

The psalms were a way for the people of the Ancient Near East to offer prayers, praise, or laments to God. In very poetic language, they described the majesty and splendor of God. Many psalms were a lament for whatever the evil of the day was and an opportunity to express righteous indignation for whatever said evil was. You can experience the depth of the relationship the psalmist had with God by how and what they wrote.

Fortunately for us, the psalms and the art of writing psalms was not just for the people of old. We have the privilege to bare our souls before God in praise, supplication, and in lament. A few months ago, our pastor in church gave us the opportunity to explore Psalm 13 as a prototype for writing psalms. I encourage you to read this Psalm when you have the time. The general idea is that this Psalm offers something of a formula to follow when trying to write a psalm:

  1. Express how you feel
  2. Remember the greater story of what God is doing
  3. Recognize God’s salvation
  4. Rejoice in God’s goodness

Based on this formula, the pastor gave us the opportunity to write our own psalms to God (Interestingly enough, my daily journal also encouraged me to do something similar). So after reflecting on how I was feeling and how my 2022 had shaped up to be, I wrote this psalm to God:

I am lost and feeling directionless

But I remember that your purpose was to seek and save that which was lost

You are the way; the one pointing my feet where they need to go

You are my truth, when the world screams what is your truth and encourages multiple truths

And today, I trust you because even though my life feels directionless, it really isn’t because you O God, are my life

Yes I know it does not rhyme and is not poetic but in that moment this was the baring of my soul to God. In fact, I have gone back to this psalm a few times in the past few weeks since writing it and have found strength in the words I wrote to God.

Is there something you would like to tell God today? Do you have a praise report, a burning request, or a lament to take up with God? Well, friend, consider writing a psalm to God.

Yours Truly