FROM THE DAWGHOUSE….
POWER…NOW
A DAWG sometimes seems random in this sense: I haven’t read a Psalm for a few days and my Bible marker today, when I decided to start my DAWG with a Psalm, was at Psalm 44.
So, I read Psalm 44. I had read up to Psalm 43 and I was just picking up where I left off. Random, right?
Maybe not. I needed to hear the words of Psalm 44 today, and the Lord spoke to me through it just like He will speak to you when you alight on God’s word and chew them over and ask the Spirit to bring you illumination.
(“Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Thy law.” Psalm 119:18)
So catch what I read:
Psalm 44:1-3
To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah.
44 “O God, we have heard with our ears,
our fathers have told us,
what deeds you performed in their days,
in the days of old:
2 you with your own hand drove out the nations,
but them you planted;
you afflicted the peoples,
but them you set free;
3 for not by their own sword did they win the land,
nor did their own arm save them,
but your right hand and your arm,
and the light of your face,
for you delighted in them.”
The Psalm writer is remembering history…history is His (God’s) story. God has worked powerfully in the past. Every Jew knew this. Every Christian knows this too.
Now before reading Psalm 44, I had read Chapter 4 from A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God in which he had made the point that for most Christians:
“God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the individual. ‘He must be,’ they say, ‘therefore we believe He is.’ Others do not go even so far as this; they know of Him only by hearsay.”
Now Tozer’s entire chapter (and book) is worth reading, but after reading that chapter in Tozer to jump start my mind to read Psalm 44, I realized a few things:
Many Christians and sometimes me— are how Tozer described. God is a deduction, but do I/we always live as though He were really present with me/us every day? Do I/we live as if the most powerful King of everything is right near me/us? Do we think of God as alive and powerful now?
And then Psalm 44 brought up how the people of Israel often thought of God as the Great One who worked in history past. A similar message Tozer wrote (in 1948). The Israelites know of the great and powerful deeds of God. I mean we Christian men do too! We can jump back into Genesis through the book of Esther and see God at work big time, over centuries.
Ah…but do we view God only as the One who has worked in the past but isn’t really working now?
In Psalm 44 the author picks up on that idea. Look:
Psalm 44:4-8
4 You are my King, O God;
ordain salvation for Jacob!
5 Through you we push down our foes;
through your name we tread down those who rise up against us.
6 For not in my bow do I trust,
nor can my sword save me.
7 But you have saved us from our foes
and have put to shame those who hate us.
8 In God we have boasted continually,
and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah
My take aways for today…from Tozer and Psalm 44 seem to be a combined message that is not random but something that My Father and Lord Jesus Christ want me to hear today:
Live as though God’s Kingdom is here now. Yes, it’s invisible much of the time, but nevertheless very real. Lord what are You saying to me about my leadership of my family and FORGE and my life today? Where are you working? What do you want to do in and through me today? Help me to see Your Kingly rule and not think of You as an intellectual necessity but as the real living King that You are…right here…right now! Change the world in one way through me today. Advance Your Kingdom in one step today, at least! What a joy to be Your son and servant now! In Jesus’ strong Name I pray, Amen!
So as you live today remember, God doesn’t do random.
As A King, He doesn’t have to.
Be aware of Him all day!
You take it to heart!
Pete Alwinson
