6-3-07
Enjoying God’s Love
Favorite Psalms Part 8
Psalm 25 (pt.2)

Summary: The second of the three categories of attributes in this psalm is God’s mercy/love, which has three parts: 1) gracious looking, 2) gracious remembering, 3) restoration. This message is about #1. David desires nothing but God’s pity (a wonderful strength-giving gift for the humble), love (HESED), and favor. And the threefold response is to make that the object of your desire, trust in promises about God’s love and compassion, and wait for God by eagerly anticipating grace and refusing substitutes. 

Of David. To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul; 2 in you I trust, O my God. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.  3 No one who waits for you will ever be put to shame, but they will be put to shame who are treacherous without excuse.  
4 Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths; 5 guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and I wait for you all day long.  
6 Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. 7 Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O LORD. 
8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.  9 He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.  10 All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant.  11 For the sake of your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, though it is great.  
12 Who, then, is the man that fears the LORD? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.  13 He will spend his days in prosperity, and his descendants will inherit the land.  14 The LORD confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them.  
15 My eyes are ever on the LORD, for only he will release my feet from the snare.  16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.  17 The troubles of my heart have multiplied; free me from my anguish.  18 Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins.  19 See how my enemies have increased and how fiercely they hate me!  20 Guard my life and rescue me; let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.  20 May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.  22 Redeem Israel, O God, from all their troubles! 

Review: Desiring, trusting, and waiting on God as a refuge
David wrote this psalm in a time when seemingly every part of his life was unraveling, and he was under attack from every direction. And the model God gave us in the psalm shows us that when that kind of thing happens in your life – troubles on top of troubles, the thing to do is to fix your gaze upon the attributes of God. Focus on what God is like, and then respond with the same three-fold response David’s heart had to God’s attributes. He lifted his soul to God (making God the only object of his desire). He latched on to the great and precious promises that are implied by the attributes, and trusted in those. He waited on God – eagerly anticipating the grace that was coming, and refusing to accept any substitute or alternative. 
And we found last time that in this psalm David zeros in on three categories of attributes. Last time we focused on the first one – God as a refuge. We found that it is wrong to look to anything in this world as a refuge. God is the only refuge there is. It is fine to delight in the temporal means God uses to provide His refuge, but we have to realize that the protection and relief that comes from those things (like your parents or spouse or insurance or house or storm shelter or paycheck or doctor or vacation or video game), whatever protection and relief you get comes from God and not from that earthly tool God is using. If you utilize those things as means of fellowship with God, that is good. But if you start preferring those things over fellowship with God as your refuge, that is idolatry and unfaithfulness to God.
Enjoying God as your only refuge is a delightful way to live, because God is always the solution to all your problems. And no one on earth has the power to block your access to God’s presence; and all the effort you put into the solution to your problems will be nothing but the pursuit of grace from God. And that is the best thing you could possibly be doing with your time and energy.

Mercy
The second category of God’s attributes in this psalm is God’s mercy. I have really lumped a lot of things together under the huge category of “mercy.” So it might take us a couple weeks to get through them. We will start in verse 16.

Gracious Looking

Presence & Favor

16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.  

The word “turn” is just the Hebrew word for “face.”  And it is the most common word to refer to God’s presence. So the idea is for God to come and be present with David, and turn His face toward David. The word translated “gracious” means to show favor.
In some ways David was a pretty simple guy. Once in a while you will hear someone say, “I am a complicated person.” Usually what that means is, “I am impossible to please” (because of discontent). David was not complicated. There was always something that would please him. His outlook was very simple. If the problem is enemies attacking you, the solution is favor from God – just to experience God’s presence and have Him look at you in a favorable way. If the problem is painful, difficult circumstances in life, the solution is favor from God. If the problem is overwhelming guilt from your sin, the solution is favor from God. If the problem is loneliness, the solution is not making friends, getting out more, or dating or getting married; the solution to loneliness is the presence of God. 

16 “Turn to me … because I am lonely”

If the problem is affliction, the solution is favor from God – any kind of favor, delivered in any way through any means. When we dictate to God what form His favor has to take (“God, I won’t be happy unless you give me favor in this particular form”), we prove that our desire is really for that form, not for God’s favor itself. 

Mercy
But David wanted nothing but God’s favor.

6 Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. 

The word translated “mercy” is the word for pity. It is the emotion you feel when your heart is touched by someone who is in trouble that moves you to help him. Last week we learned how to take delight in the fact that God is our refuge. For a refuge to be a good refuge it has to be both strong and merciful. If someone is the strongest person in the world, but he does not care about your plight, he is not going to use his strength on your behalf.
The woman who runs to the arms of her husband when there is trouble, or the child to the arms of his mother in a time of sorrow or fear, is a reflection of something very wonderful about God. A woman or child who does that has a desire to be engulfed by that stronger person’s embrace. But not just because of strength – they do not run to the arms of any strong person. It is the strength mixed with love and compassion. Sometimes a husband or mother cannot even do anything to help the problem. But the compassion of a greater strength is sought nonetheless. There is a comfort and strengthening that comes simply from the sympathy of one who loves them. It can fill you with courage that wasn’t there before.

The joy of being pitied 
It feels good to be pitied. And I realize that for some of you that statement is a jolt to your system. And you are not sure you agree with it. There are many people who do not like pity. You hear that in the movies all the time – “I don’t want your pity!”  When pride dominates our hearts, we tend to resist pity. We do not want people feeling sorry for us because if someone is pitying me, what does that make me? - Pitiful. If I am fit to be the object of people’s sympathy and empathy, by definition that makes me pathetic. And the last thing pride can handle is being exposed as pitiful or pathetic. 
But the most pitiful and pathetic thing of all is the person who is pitiful and pathetic but who thinks he is not, and so he rejects pity and sympathy. It is okay to be sick if there is a doctor around with medicine. But if you are sick and you will not admit to yourself that you are sick, then you will refuse the medicine and you really will be sick. So the more pride you have in your heart the harder it is for you to enjoy pity.
But humble people are acutely aware of how pitiful and pathetic they are. And so for them, pity and sympathy are wonderful things. David was one of the most spectacularly strong and powerful and respected and intelligent and gifted and creative people on the planet. And yet he did not have any trouble at all realizing how pathetic and pitiful and needy he was before God. So he absolutely delighted in receiving God’s pity. He loved it. That is why he wants God to just look at his suffering. 

18 Look upon my affliction and my distress 
19 See how my enemies have increased 

He just wants God to look at him and see his suffering, like a child who gets hurt and comes running to his mother to show her his wound. As soon as she sees it and does the universal sign of motherly compassion by kissing it, he is satisfied and runs off to play. The physical pain of the wound is exactly the same as it was a minute ago, but it is bearable to him now. 
I think when we laugh at our kids for being that way, we laugh because we tend to think all there is to pain is the physical part. And it is silly to think a kiss can do anything to help the physical injury. But the physical part is not the only part – it is not even the main part of suffering. Young children understand something that a lot of adults do not. They understand the strengthening, courage-giving, healing power of pity. And pity is like Trix cereal – it is not just for kids. 
If we could get past our pride and the ridiculous silliness of imagining that we have reserves of strength within ourselves and are not in need of God’s pity, we could enjoy the strengthening that little children enjoy from the kiss of compassion from their mothers. Let’s just admit it – none of us are strong enough to bear the suffering of life without grace from God. And one of the wonderful means by which God gives us that grace is through His pity. The compassion of God is a sweet, sweet thing. It feels really, really good. It fills you with strength. It empowers you and motivates you and enables you to endure anything – any torture, any beating, burning at the stake – anything. The writers of Scripture saw God’s pity as essential for their very life.

Ps.119:77 Let your pity come to me that I may live 
Ps.40:11 Your pity and your truth always protect me.
Ps.103:4-5 [He] redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and pity
Lam.3:22-23 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his pities never fail. 23 They are new every morning

The Father’s kiss of compassion feels so good and gives so much grace that it is probably better to suffer and experience His pity than to not suffer at all.
Whether we admit it or not, we all really do love pity. That is why you tell people when terrible things happen to you. When we have hardship, something in us just wants someone to know about it. But not just anyone - it has to be someone who loves you. You are not comforted at the thought of your enemies being aware of your suffering. It has to be someone who will have compassion for you. 
That is not a bad thing. God made us to desire and enjoy compassion when we suffer. Do not let your pride keep you from enjoying one of the wonderful gifts God has given us. But be careful on the other side not to elevate compassion from people above compassion from God so that you turn it into an idol. If you find yourself wanting certain people to know how much you are suffering, but you don’t get much comfort from God’s knowing about your suffering, that’s not a good sign. 
If you do not know how to enjoy God’s pity - if you do not know how to be truly and genuinely encouraged and strengthened by sensing and feeling His compassion for you when you suffer, then make it a high priority goal in your Christian life to work toward that, because that will increase your joy in God in great measure. One way to work toward that is this: Whenever you enjoy the compassion of the people who really love you, let that enjoyment teach your heart to crave God’s compassion. Because whatever enjoyment you get from that is only a tiny little emblem of the kind of joy you could get from God’s compassion. And whenever you are sad because people are not compassionate about your suffering – let that sadness teach you how much your heart craves pity, and let that increase your hunger and thirst and desire and longing for the presence of God, where you will find what you are craving. 
Sometimes the reason we prefer human compassion to God’s is because people can be deceived. You get a cut that hardly hurts at all but that really looks bad, and you can milk that for all kinds of sympathy by pretending it really hurts. You cannot do that with God, because He knows exactly how you feel. But on the other side, God has compassion on you in times when no one else will. For example, on one of those days when you are especially tired and unmotivated and emotionally down in the dumps, it may be a considerable hardship for you to just get up out of bed. No one is going to feel sorry for you that you had to get out of bed  (“Guess what – I had to get out of bed this morning”); no one is going to feel sorry for you for that – except God. He understands exactly how hard it is for you on that particular day. Jesus had days like that, and He remembers. Psalm five says He considers your sighs. When you go “Ughhhhhhh” – God considers that. He pays close attention to it. He knows all that is behind it and everything that is contributing to it. He knows how you feel when you don’t even understand how you feel. He has compassion on you when you feel oppressed and overloaded, even if you have no real reason to feel oppressed and overloaded. He’s not like your husband, who has to have a full explanation of exactly why you are justified in feeling oppressed and overloaded before he will give you an ounce of sympathy.
And the really great thing about God’s compassion is it always comes with grace. So often when we feel sorry for someone there is nothing we can do about it. But God never has that problem. God is so powerful, so merciful, so kind, so loving, so beneficent, that for Him to merely look in your direction results in great blessing.
And when you enjoy God’s compassion, enjoy it even more by becoming the agent through whom God’s compassion is delivered to others. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, men, if your children and your wife found in your arms what you find in God’s arms? Instead of being the source of most of Tracy’s troubles, I want to get to the place where my love is a haven of God’s refuge from her troubles. Wouldn’t it be great if instead of your kids having to worry about whether they are annoying you all the time, when they saw you they saw a paradise of God’s compassion? I want everyone around me to find me to be strength-giving and compassionate and safe and soothing and edifying and fortifying and courage-building, so that my little sphere becomes an outpost of the great refuge of our souls. None of that can happen until we learn to enjoy God’s pity in our lives. You cannot pass on what you are not even receiving yourself. 

Love 
The other word in verse six is translated “love.” That is the Hebrew word HESED. David uses that word three times in this psalm – in verses 6, 7, and 10. God’s HESED is the combination of His favorable disposition toward you and His kind actions toward you. It is because of that disposition and those actions that you can approach His presence. 

Psalm 5:7 I, by your great HESED, will come into your house

That disposition and those actions make a worthless, rejected sinner acceptable in His presence. God’s HESED works in opposition to His wrath. (Psalm 106:43-45) His wrath and hatred of our sin is a giant, unbreachable iron door designed specifically to keep people like us out of His presence, and His HESED is the key that opens that door to us.
So often in Scripture the word HESED is modified by the word “great.”

Ps.51:1 according to your great HESED blot out my transgressions.

God’s anger is limited. His wrath and justice are kept within the bounds of exactly what is deserved – no more. His fury over sin is measured out in strict proportions. But His love is dumped and showered and lavished without measure in abundant, disproportionate overflow. 

Psalm 30:5 [for the saints] his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime

The love of God is a treasure and a wonder beyond any other wonder. It is better than life at its best. 

Psalm 63:3 Because your HESED is better than life, my lips will praise you.

There is no pleasure or thrill or satisfaction that can compare to the experience of God’s love.  It is more satisfying to the soul than all the pleasures of life combined. It is more delightful than the most wonderful things in nature. Better than friends, better than family, better than the marriage bed,– better than any human love – better than life.

All His ways
Recently one of my children asked me if every single thing that happens to a Christian is ultimately good. Or are there some things God allows that are not ultimately for my good? The answer to that is in verse ten. 

10 All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant.  

God’s HESED characterizes all His ways – all His dealings with His people (not with unbelievers, but with us). And that includes the times when God deals roughly with us. 

Ps.119:75 I know, O LORD, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me.

When His ways include sickness, injury, loss, sorrow, suffering – still it is all loaded full of His HESED and His faithfulness. Which means every time I become aware of any kind of affliction in my life – from the least to the greatest, I can take delight in that and rejoice over the fact that at that moment I am experiencing the direct touch of the loving, faithful hand of God! And that is to be preferred over life at its best. 
In other places Scripture speaks of a coming and going and ebbing and flowing of God’s love. That is why psalmists who already have it ask for it – they want more. But here we learn that all that ebbing and flowing takes place on top of a foundation of God’s love that is constant and unchanging. For His children there is a baseline minimum flow of His love; a level below which the expression of His HESED never drops. Even in the midst of our sins and rebellions and evil, it remains. It never leaves us. If it did we would experience catastrophe beyond imagination. 

6 Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old 

They are the ruts worn by God’s constantly taking that path in His dealings with us. Think of all the times in your life when you have been happy, or delighted, or excited about something. Think of all the thousands of times you have been encouraged, strengthened, emboldened, motivated. Think of all the good things that have happened to you - things that were not only good, but that God also granted along with the ability to enjoy them. (When God gives good things, but without the ability to enjoy them, it is miserable.) Every single one of those times, the enjoyment, happiness, strength, encouragement, motivation, joy, contentment, peace - it all came from God’s HESED. All of it – none of it came from any event or person. God’s love is so wonderful and so satisfying, that by itself it is enough to fill you full of inexpressible joy even if at that moment you happen to be experiencing intense, excruciating pain.

The three-fold response to God’s mercy
1) Soul Lifting
So that is an overview of these two categories of attributes of God: His pity and love. Now let’s talk about the three-fold response. The first of the responses is to lift up your soul to God with respect to that attribute. Remember, lifting up the soul to something means making that thing the object of your desires and the basis of your hope. So what does it look like to lift your soul to God’s favor? It just means to want it. It means to long for His favorable presence; to crave His nearness to you. Sometimes when you read about the fact that God has pity on you because of your suffering, it does nothing in your heart. It does not fill you with joy or encouragement or strengthening. It is just a Bible factoid. But other times it does fill you with courage and strength and comfort. To lift your soul to that simply means to really want that second experience. It means to have an appetite – a thirst in your soul, for fellowship with God.
It is amazing – the most precious, most costly, most valuable treasure in the entire universe is available, and all you have to do to get it is want it more than you want any other treasure.
                      
The Logic of mercy
Several times in this psalm David resorts to what I call the “logic of mercy.” The logic of mercy is reasoning that works this way: “God, I am in need of something I don’t deserve, therefore give it to me on the basis of Your mercy.” It is the opposite of the logic of merit. The logic of merit says, “I have earned it, I deserve it, so give it to me.” The logic of mercy says, “I cannot earn it. But give it to me anyway just because You are so generous and because I’m so needy.” We see David use that logic in verse 16.

Psalm 25:16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for (here comes the logic) I am alone and afflicted.  

The basis upon which he asks for favor is his need. The logic of mercy is great news for people like us – people who keep on stumbling and keep on failing and keep on falling into sin after sin. As long as we are weak and undeserving and helpless we always have standing to come to God with our requests for more grace. One of the most extreme examples of the logic of mercy I’ve ever seen is in Ps.41, where David is writing from his sickbed.

Psalm 41:4 I said, "O LORD, have mercy on me; heal me (Why?) for I have sinned against you."

That’s the logic of mercy. The only requirement for grace is that you need grace and seek it from God.

Psalm 36:7-8 How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings. 8 They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. 

The privilege of feasting on the abundance of God’s house and drinking from His river of delights is restricted to one certain group – the group of people who take refuge in God. Isaiah 55 gives us another way to think about it.

Isaiah 55:1 Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. 

Water and milk and wine and food are symbols that point to that which satisfies the appetites of your soul. And it is all free, but only a select group of people get it. And that select group of people is the group that fulfills the one requirement in that verse. And the requirement is you have to come to Him, and you have to come thirsty and hungry for Him. That is the logic of mercy. You can enjoy God’s love if you only lift up your soul to Him and make His love the object of your desires. You glorify Him by receiving grace from Him.
Learn to interpret all the longings of your soul as what they are - longings for God. I think the most gullible thing in the world has to be the human soul. Satan will take some tired old earthly enticement that has never once satisfied your soul, and put some new kind of glitter on it, and present it to you as something that will fill up your life with happiness, and we fall for it every time. You see a commercial, or a thought just pops into your head about a vacation to some place you have always wanted to go, and you think, “Now that would satisfy the longings of my soul.” We are really no different from a little kid in the toy isle of a store. We walk through life thinking, “I want that. I want that. I want that. That would really make me happy. That would satisfy all my desires. That would fill me up with joy.” It can be anything from a two million dollar house to a Snickers bar at the gas station. It does not matter. Your soul will assure you that if you just get it, you will be happy.
And so the trick is to learn to take all those impulses and translate them into longings for the one thing that really can satisfy long term, and that really can fill you with a powerful enough joy that it can overpower the pain and sorrows of life. So you get in your old, piece of junk jalopy car and you see your neighbor’s nice, new car, and it just seems like life would be so wonderful if you had a decent car. Or you are in the mall and there is a clothing store (or sporting goods store), and your soul just insists that a few hundred dollars spent in that store, would put a smile on your face that would never come off. Or maybe there is a person that you think if you were just married to that person you would be happy; Or if the person you already married would change; Or if you could just get a decent job. Or if you just popped in a good DVD and relaxed on the couch for a couple hours all your troubles would just melt away.
Those are all really hunger pangs for the presence of God. There is a deep, powerful, thirst in the human soul for fellowship with God. And it is incessant and insistent and relentless. And the only way Satan can keep you from running after God with all your strength is by conning you into thinking that something else will satisfy that thirst. And so a good appetite in your soul comes out as an evil desire. 
Success in the Christian life will come when we can train ourselves to reinterpret those hunger pangs for what they really are. So when you see an advertisement for some dream vacation, and your soul just longs to go, ask yourself – what is it that my soul wants to get from that vacation? Pleasure? Rest? Refuge from work? Rejuvenation? What is my soul hungering for? Whatever it is, imagine you wrote it down on a piece of paper – a list of all the appetites of the soul that you expect to be satisfied by this vacation  (or this person you want to marry, or this shopping spree, or this remodeled kitchen, or this sinful activity, or this recreation). Now imagine God appeared in front of you and looked at the piece of paper. And then He looked you in the eye and said this: “I will make you a promise. I will give you everything you have written on this piece of paper. I will give you those things and keep giving you those things until your soul is satisfied. I might do it by means of a vacation, or I might choose some other means. I might give them to you in your own house while you are doing laundry; I might give them to you at work, I might give them to you at a soup kitchen while you are feeding the poor. But one way or another I promise I will give you all the things on this paper.” Then He goes on to say, “I can see the future, and I have seen that vacation you want to go on, and I assure you it does not have the ability to give you the things you have written on this piece of paper.” 
Then He types up that promise that He just made to you – that He would give you everything on that paper, and prints out an official document on divine letterhead, and signs it, and sets the document down on the table. And right next to it He sets down some airline tickets and vouchers for an all-expense paid trip to wherever you were wanting to go. And He tells you you can pick one. What would you do?
That is not an imaginary scenario. It is exactly the choice we all face every single time we experience a desire. God is the only one who can satisfy the appetites of the soul. If you go on a vacation and come back feeling satisfied and full of joy it is not because of the vacation. It is only because God gave you some of His favor and mercy while you were on the vacation. If God had not done that then you would have come back from the vacation feeling empty and unsatisfied. But on the other hand if God decided to give you that same favor and mercy at home, you would feel just as joyful and happy and satisfied without even going on the vacation. And so the vacation is nothing and God’s favor is everything. And that goes for every desire your soul ever has.
That does not mean you never want to go on vacation. But it does mean that when you do go on vacation the reason you go is so you can receive a certain kind of expression of God’s favor. And it also means that if you ever have to choose between a vacation and a higher expression of God’s favor you will chose the latter in a heartbeat. 
So we need to train ourselves to reinterpret the hunger pangs of the soul for what they really are. And the stronger the desire, the more helpful it is to teach you about how much your soul longs for the presence of God. So any time you have feelings of discontent, train your heart to understand that your soul is really hungry for fellowship with God.

2) Trust
Once you lift your soul to God’s mercy and grace and kindness and faithfulness and HESED, you latch on to His great and precious promises specifically about God’s love and cling to those for all your strength and encouragement. Last week we decided as a church to memorize 26 of God’s great and precious promises – one for each letter of the alphabet. Once you memorize those promises it is easy to think of promises about God’s love and mercy toward us. Use those to fight against sin.
You run into trouble in life – maybe some problems in some relationship, and you’re tempted to be discouraged over the fact that someone is not loving you like you want to be loved, and so you do what David did – fix your eyes on what God is like. And right away you see this attribute of God’s HESED. And you lift your soul to that – make that the object of your desires. You prefer the HESED and compassion of God over love from people. That is the first part of the three-fold response. 
The second part is this: that you walk through the day trusting in God’s promises regarding His love. Satan tries to tell you that unless this person changes and starts loving you like you want to be loved, you will never be happy. And you respond by saying, “Never be happy? The word “be” reminds me of the letter B. And B is for ‘Better than life’.”

Ps.63:3 Your HESED is better than life

Even if my wife doesn’t love me like I want to be loved, and even if other people fail to love me, it doesn’t matter because God has promised to love me with a love that is better than the best life has to offer. Which means the experience of God’s love is even better than a perfect marriage. 
And Satan comes back and says, “But that is not going to be enough to satisfy you. You need a human touch. You need it from your wife, and if she does not give you the kind of love you need, you are not going to be satisfied no matter what God does. Love from God alone is not going to be enough to satisfy you.” 
And you respond by saying, “Speaking of the letter S and the word “satisfy,” when I approach the presence of God the promise is in Psalm 63:5. 

Psalm 63:5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods.

And speaking of rich food, “rich” starts with R. And R is for River of Delights.

Psalm 36:8 They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. 

God’s love is a river, Satan – there is way more than enough to satisfy the little teaspoon of need in my soul. And Satan says, “That is only if God is pleased with you. But in your case God is mostly angry and disappointed because of all your sin.” And you say, “Nice try, but you’re forgetting about the letter Q.

Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with shouts of joy!" 

And Satan will say, “This is hopeless” and he will go find someone else to bother. That is what it means to walk by faith, and to overcome the sin of discontent by faith, and to use the shield of faith to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

3) Wait
So when you face some trouble in life, you immediately turn to God and fix your attention on what He is like and His attributes. And your eye catches this huge, bright, brilliant ray of His glory called His love. And you lift your soul to that – making God’s love the object of the desires and longings of your soul. Then you start walking by faith – trusting in God’s great and precious promises about His love. And then the third part of the three-fold response: Wait for God. - Eagerly anticipate; - Refuse substitutes/alternatives. Don’t just tell yourself the abstract fact that God’s love is better than life and that it will be satisfying. Do the kinds of things you do when you want to make your soul eagerly anticipate something: Think about it. Imagine what it is going to feel like when God satisfies your soul with His love. Day dream about it. 
And then refuse any alternatives or substitutes. Abraham did not wait for God to fulfill His promise of a son for Abraham in His way. Instead of waiting he opted for a substitute. He slept with Hagar to get a son through her. Hold your flesh back from pressuring you into accepting a substitute out of impatience. An example of a substitute would be if you strong-arm or nag your spouse into giving you what you want, or seeking it from some sinful means, or by placing your hope in some circumstance or person other than God.
This has some very practical applications. If the longings of my soul are going unsatisfied do I first go to people to get them to behave the way I want? Or if I first go into my prayer room and lock the door and refuse to come out until my soul has been satisfied by the presence of God?
That is not to say that I never talk to the person about changes that may need to be made. But that should come only after I have found all that I need in God alone. Then when I talk to the person I am free to concern myself mainly with his needs and desires; and when I do bring up my desires, if he wants to fulfill them fine, but now it is just a loving exchange of fellowship rather than me putting the massive burden of making me happy on their shoulders. Any time I put that responsibility on your shoulders I am going to end up angry at you, because no matter what they do they will not be able to satisfy the appetites of my soul for love.
Fix your eyes on the glory of God’s compassion and love. Make that the object of the desires of your soul. Latch on to the promises about His love and derive all your strength and joy from those. And wait. Eagerly anticipate the grace that will come from God, and accept no substitute. 

Benediction: Eph 3:17-19  I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Discussion Questions

Daily Devotionals

The God who gives in proportion to need, not merit

Psalm 25 (God’s pity and love), Day 1

Psalm 25:16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am alone and afflicted.  17 The troubles of my heart have multiplied; free me from my anguish.  18 Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. 

	The “logic of grace” appears in verse 16. The basis upon which he asks for God’s favor is his need. That means we always have standing to come to God with our requests, as we are ever in need. 
	Lord today I am in great need of Your empowerment and strengthening. Show me Your favor, dear Lord, because I am in such need of it. Turn to me, because I need You to turn to me. 
	In Psalm 25, 86 and 143 the psalmist asked that God would bring him joy because of the fact that he lifted his soul to God. It is appropriate, once you have lifted your soul to Him, to ask for blessings in return because of that lifting. What an amazing thing! The prerequisite for being able to ask for some blessings is the enjoyment of some other blessing. The gods of the nations would have people give up something or make some sacrifice or inflict some pain or injury upon themselves to get their gods to respond with some favor. But with the true God it is just the opposite. God does not ask you to injure yourself or give up anything that is of any ultimate worth. All He requires is that you run to the most wonderful place there is. To experience Him as your Benefactor all you have to do is look to Him as Benefactor (rather than beneficiary of your offerings). Psalm 36:7-8  
	Right now I lift my soul to You. To the best of what I understand, I offer myself to You at this moment Lord. Right now I prefer You above all other thoughts or experiences. There is absolutely nothing in this world that I would rather be doing right now Lord – nothing. Nothing I can think of sounds better even to these idolatrous ears.  So many hundreds of times a day I fail at this and prefer other things, but at least for this moment, there is nothing on earth I desire besides You. 
	And beyond that, I now resolve to prefer You above all and lift my soul to You every moment that I can for the rest of my life with ever increasing frequency and earnestness and purity. I realize, Lord, that my resolve means very little. So often I resolve to do things and fail. There are so many more layers of the will that must be brought in line with the top layer (and the easiest of all to manipulate) – that of resolve. But You, blessed Savior, accept resolve as valid worship nonetheless. Oh thank You, dear Lord! Thank You for accepting my almost worthless resolve as valid worship. 
	Teach me now to move deeper than resolve, to change those aspects of my will that are loaded and cocked and aimed to fire in the wrong direction given certain circumstances. Change within me those deep layers of the will that move against the direction of my resolve, and at the moment when preferring You means some suffering or the “loss” of some worldly delicacy that seems so tasty – at that moment those parts of me will forget all I know of the superiority of Your river of delights and opt instead for broken cisterns. Do the deep surgery that only You can do to change those impulses. Enable me to crucify again my flesh at this moment, dear Lord, that the new man You have created may break free of bondage to the body of this death. 
	In asking for all this and really desiring it (at what level only You know), I am lifting my soul to You. And so Lord, on the basis of that, I make my request for blessing. Since I have looked to You as my great Benefactor, I ask now for this blessing. Lord God, please bless Your servant with sight. Open my eyes wider to see more of Your glory. Let me see You as the worthy and trustworthy receiver of my soul. Let that become more and more obvious to me as I see it reflected in the mirror of Your creation.
	One mirror where God has given us an illustration of this is in the woman who runs to the arms of her husband or the child to the arms of his mother in a time of sorrow or fear or great joy.  They feel the need to be engulfed by that stronger person’s embrace. But not just because of comforting strength – they do not run to the arms of any strong person – it is the strength mixed with the great love and care. And it is also the desire for personal, relational closeness. In the human realm it is not even always that the husband or mother can even do anything to help the problem. But the compassion of a greater strength is sought nonetheless.  There is a comfort and en-courage-ment that comes simply from the compassion and sympathy of the beloved. 
	Lord, whenever I see a child or woman eager for the comforting, encouraging, protecting, soothing embrace of a mother or husband, let that mirror reflect to me this attribute of You – You, Lord God, the place where my soul belongs. 
	And Father, let me become a mirror that reflects this truth to others. Each time I see this attribute let me first take time to experience it and enjoy it myself, and then let that flow into motivation for me to exhibit this attribute.  You have made me a father and a husband, so I am in a wonderful place to show it. Father teach me to mimic You in this that my children and wife may find in my arms what I find in Yours. In my interaction with all people I pray that whatever level of this attribute that would be appropriate would be shown through me. Let people I encounter find me to be en-couraging, and strength-giving and compassionate and safe and soothing and edifying. Let my sphere be a tiny refuge that reflects the great Refuge of our souls.  Let me be a reflection – not one that would cause people to offer their souls toward me, but that would draw people to lift their souls to You. 
	So on the basis of having lifted my soul to You I ask for insight. And, Father, for the sake of Your glory as the great Benefactor, I will continue to ask for more and more blessings and benefits, that Your generosity might be exhibited all the more. I ask now Lord, for Your favor. I ask that You would give me favor in the eyes of men. I ask that You would provide for us the finances we need to live. I ask that my family would be able to know the joy in You that I have found this morning. I ask that You, in Your infinite grace, would use Your servant in ministry. I ask that You would proliferate expository churches throughout the world, and especially here. I pray that You would feed that countless starving saints who long for Your Word but who are being fed human wisdom instead. 

Attribute to behold, desire, experience & enjoy: He gives grace in proportion to need, not merit.
Promise to trust: You will listen to my cry for help even when (especially when) I have made myself even more undeserving through my sin
What will result if I experience this attribute today: Greater love and desire for God (and all those He loves), Safety and protection, Peace and calmness, Encouragement and comfort, Confidence, courage, Fear of God, awe and reverence, Desire to obey

Compassion

Psalm 25 (God’s pity and love), Day 2

Psalm 25:16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am alone and afflicted.  17 The troubles of my heart have multiplied; free me from my anguish.  18 Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. 
Good morning dear Lord,
	Help me commit this day into Your hands. I am tired and weak today Lord, and that seems to reduce my ability to cry out to You in earnest. When I am weak is when I need Your strength and support and enablement and grace all the more, and yet I am prone not to beseech You for it as much or even at all when I am this tired. Father, help me. Give me at least enough strength to cry out to You for help. 
	Look upon my affliction and distress, dear Lord. Just look at me. I am like a child who gets hurt and comes running to his mother to show her his wound.  As soon as she sees it and shows compassion by kissing it, he is satisfied and runs off to play. The pain of the wound is bearable to him as long as he doesn’t have to bear it without his mother’s kiss of compassion.  As long as he knows that she has seen his affliction and is aware of how much it hurts and feels for him, he is strong and can bear the suffering. 
	Father, I would rather have that look of pity from You than to have no suffering at all. I would rather be hurt and receive Your compassion and comfort than not be hurt at all. I don’t know what it is within my soul that so longs for empathy and pity. When I have hardship, something in me just wants someone to know about it. But it has to be someone who loves me. I am not comforted at the thought of my enemies being aware of my suffering. It has to be someone who will have compassion for me. Lord, I think You have made me to love being the object of compassion, but my sinful, idolatrous heart, as usual, has tended to look toward people for that instead of toward You. I have desired and sought their compassion and not Yours. 
	Father, teach me to seek Yours and not theirs. Teach me to enjoy Your compassion. When I do receive it from other people, let me enjoy that as Your pity expressed through others, so that I learn to so enjoy Your compassion that I will begin to desire it from You and not people. 
	Maybe one reason I’m so quick to want others to see my affliction rather than just desiring that You look upon it is because people can see the suffering without being aware of the immense blessing that I am also receiving.  Sometimes I know that if You look at my suffering You will see that it is not really suffering. Some things for which people will offer me empathy are things that do not really even hurt me or bother me.  And if they knew that, as You do, they would not show me compassion. Lord, the desire for them to see that kind of “suffering” is nothing but a desire to deceive – to make them think I am suffering when I am not. And in a time like that I am willing to inflict suffering upon them (compassion hurts), through deceit, for my own benefit! Oh Lord, please forgive Your servant. Take away this heart of deceit.  Make me truthful about my blessing. Lord, if people see the enormity of my blessing, and as a result no human being ever feels sorry for me again, Your compassion would be enough for me. Father, I believe that; help my unbelief. 
	Your compassion is so much better, dear Lord, than that of people. Their feeling sorry for me for suffering that is not really even suffering may feel good, but it is not the grace I need for life. Your pity is over real suffering. And while some of the things they might feel sorry for me over are things that don’t elicit pity from Your heart, because You know they don’t really hurt that much – there are other things that You know are hard for me, and that no one would feel sorry for me for. On a day when I am really tired and unmotivated, it may be a considerable hardship for me to just get up and go to work. That will not make anyone feel great compassion for me, but You know how hard it is for me on that particular day. You know everything. You understand my thoughts from afar. You consider my sighs and meditations. You know how I feel when I don’t even understand how I feel. You have compassion on me when I feel oppressed and overloaded, even if I am not oppressed and overloaded. You have pity on me when I feel bad, even when there is no real reason for me to feel bad. What a Friend You are, Mighty God! You are the Ancient of Days, but You are my brother who walks close by my side and attends to my thoughts and feelings every moment.  
	The psalmist just wanted You to turn toward him and look upon his plight. He just wanted to be looked at by You.  Lord, You are so wonderful, so gracious, so powerful, so merciful, so kind, so loving, so beneficent; that to receive great benefit all that is needed is for one to be looked upon by You.

Attribute to behold, desire, experience & enjoy: Compassion, and so much grace that a mere look is all that is needed
Promise to trust: You will have compassion upon me and look upon my suffering and redeem me
What will result if I experience this attribute today: Encouragement and comfort, Rest and refreshment, like water to a tree, A sense of being attended to and cared for, Hope and rest, Renewal and transformation, Fear of God, awe and reverence, Desire to obey

Always faithful and loving ways

Psalm 25 (God’s pity and love), Day 3

Ps.25:10 All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant.  
Psalm 119:75 I know, O LORD, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me.

	This verse points specifically to God’s goodness that does not come in the form you want it to come in – good gifts that are other than what you desire.  Affliction.  God does not just allow affliction; He afflicts us - from tiny afflictions to huge ones. Right now, even in the midst of incalculable blessing and generally wonderful circumstances, if I think about it I can find affliction. I am sitting in a quiet office on a beautiful morning in a comfortable chair surrounded by fantastic books about God’s Word enjoying sweet fellowship with Him as He teaches me about His faithfulness in Psalm 119:75.  This is one of those moments when things could hardly be more pleasant. And yet if I think about it I can still find some traces of affliction. Affliction is constant. Sometimes it is so little I have to think hard to even find it. Other times it swells so large that it threatens to eclipse my blessings, so I have to think hard to even see the blessings. But to one degree or another it is always there. And that constant affliction is God’s way of dealing with me. Surely “laws” in this verse refers specifically to God’s judgments with regard to us and is parallel with “afflicted.” All God’s hard dealings with us, the ones that generate pain, are righteous. And all my affliction rises out of His faithfulness to all His great and glorious promises. No matter what takes place with regard to affliction, at every split second of the day I can be absolutely assured that His faithfulness to His promises has not faltered in the slightest degree. 
	Oh, what a wonderful truth, dear Lord! Your promises of goodness are so high and extreme and grandiose – for anything to even be somewhat in accordance with them would be great.  And for anything to be in full accordance with them would be far greater! But for everything to be in total accordance with them... Lord, what a blessing! To know, without any possibility of contradiction, that Your faithfulness to those promises will never even slightly waver – Oh how that should make me embrace my afflictions and rejoice over them and delight in them.
	God is no Eli. What a peril it would be if He were! What a horror if His love were so weak that He could not stomach giving us the affliction we need. 
	To the degree you become aware of your afflictions, learn to enjoy the fellowship that comes from enjoying His faithfulness in affliction. It is not good to fix all your attention on your afflictions while ignoring the countless mercies and kindnesses of God, but to the degree that you do notice your afflictions, enjoy God’s faithfulness in afflicting you. Every little hardship in life can truly delight your soul if you learn to see God’s gracious hand in it and realize you are, at that moment, having a direct experience with the faithfulness of God! 
	Dear Lord, let my life become a mirror of this attribute. I want the intimacy of walking close by Your side – step by step with You, and I know that can happen the more I become a faithful person who people can count on to always be doing them good and to always be faithful to express Your grace. Each time I am reminded of Your love and faithfulness Lord, please let that remind me of my privilege and responsibility to walk that same way toward others. Lord, let me prize those virtues in You so highly that I desperately want others to experience them, and I cause them to experience them by exhibiting them myself. Let me be loving and faithful to people out of a compelling drive and longing for people to experience Your grace.

Attribute to behold, desire, experience & enjoy: The God whose ways are always faithful and loving 
Promise to trust: You will never give me anything that is not faithfulness and love.
What will result if I experience this attribute today: Gladness and joy, Safety and protection, Peace and calmness, gratitude 

The God whose glory is worthy to be desired, trusted in, sought, and waited for 

Psalm 25 (God’s pity and love), Day 4

15 My eyes are ever on the LORD
1 To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul
2 in you I trust, O my God
19 I take refuge in you.
4 I wait for you all day long.  
20 I wait for you.
Good morning, dear Father in heaven and in this room,
	Oh how I wish I could make all these statements. For me they come out more like, “My eyes should ever be on the LORD, To You, O LORD, I ought to lift my soul, I’m trying to learn to trust in You and take refuge in You, please help me wait for You all day long. I think all those things are true of me to some degree, or I wouldn’t be a Christian. But these responses are so weak in my heart and so mixed with moments of weak faith, unbelief, eyes that look upon earthly things, a soul lifted to the temporal, taking refuge in myself, and failing to wait for You. Dear Lord God, teach Your servant to respond as I should to Your glory. Let me see enough of Your glory that these responses will become more natural.
Open my eyes to see the wonder and beauty and vastness and desirability and superiority of Your compassion, pity, love, and faithfulness. My soul is not enraptured with joy over those things as a result of a five minute glance. That is not even enough time for my eyes to adjust and focus. Like a person who wakes from sleep in a pitch dark room, walks out into the light to see what woke him, but then turns and goes back into the room before his eyes adjust enough to the light to see anything, I am afraid that is what much of my devotional life is. I look up to heaven to see You, my soul is not impressed with the blur of light, and after a few minutes I look away without really having seen You. Oh this cursed rush my flesh is in to get out of Your presence! Checking my watch to see how long before I can be done with spending time with You and move on to my work. What folly! The only thing good about doing my work is the degree to which doing it is fellowship with You. And communing with You is more difficult when I am distracted with work than when I am praying in my devotions. And so if I cannot enjoy Your presence in my devotions what makes me think I will have success enjoying Your presence in my work?
I am so ashamed, dear Lord God, of my soul’s lack of desire for You. Focused, quiet, communion with You should be the sweetest, most desired part of my day. But so often it is not. There are a million lesser things I would rather do. O, forgive Your servant, dear Lord! Forgive this adulterous heart that runs after other loves. Forgive this unfaithful soul that digs broken cisterns that cannot even hold water and prefers them to the Spring of Living Water. Help me come to my senses, dear Lord God! 
	Let this morning be one time when I persist – when I stay here before Your presence as long as it takes to really see You; to behold You in Your sanctuary and see Your glory and power. To really see Your love and compassion. Lord, let insights about Your compassion that I’ve never conceived of penetrate my heart and thrill my soul and nourish my spirit. 
	Dear Lord, You have been showing me how much I lack consideration for people. In my pride I become so focused with tunnel vision on whatever my business at hand is that I am not aware of the needs of people around me. Once I see them I am willing to meet them, but I am so slow to see them. Dear Father, help me change that. Thinking about Your Word should not prevent me from loving. And if it does surely I’m not thinking rightly about Your Word. If thoughts about You and Your glory and attributes don’t translate into love for people then those thoughts are incorrect, or at least incomplete. 
	Teach me to think rightly about Your Word, so that every thought about You and Your glory ends up being a thought about how to display and express that glory to others. This week as I enjoy seeing and experiencing Your pity and compassion, let each thought of that drive me to want to put that wonderful attribute on display, so that all those around me might experience it through me. Show me how to delight in the experience of closeness with You that comes from being the instrument of Your compassion to others. 

Attribute to behold, desire, experience & enjoy: The God whose glory is worthy to be desired, trusted in, sought, and waited for 
Promise to trust: You will let me see Your glory if I seek it with all my heart.
What will result if I experience this attribute today: Gladness and joy, Greater love and desire for God (and all those He loves), Safety and protection, Peace and calmness, A joyful, willing heart, Pleasure, Encouragement and comfort, Rest and refreshment, like water to a tree, Restoration, Guidance and clarity with regard to direction, Confidence, courage, and comfort, Honor and vindication, Fullness and satisfaction, A sense of being attended to and cared for, Hope and rest, Renewal and transformation, Strength, Motivation, Enlightenment, A greater abiding presence of Christ in the heart, Experiential knowledge of the love that surpasses knowledge, Fear of God, awe and reverence, Desire to obey

The God whose presence is real 

Psalm 25 (God’s pity and love), Day 5

15 My eyes are ever on the LORD, for only he will release my feet from the snare.  16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.  
Good morning dear Lord,
	Your presence is so real – more profoundly real even then the presence of physical human beings. In times when I have experienced Your presence, never have I felt lonely at one of those times. I felt nothing even remotely resembling loneliness. I have felt lonely when being around some of my loved ones. I have felt distant and unable to connect relationally to even some of my favorite people when I have been in their presence. But when I have been in Your presence, dear Lord, Your favorable presence to bless, to the degree that I have sensed that presence it filled my soul with the exact opposite of loneliness. That is such wonderful evidence of not only Your existence, but Your faithfulness to Your promises. If I am alone and I think about Tracy, and imagine her being with me, all that does is make me feel lonelier.
	 My fellowship with You is not in my imagination. It is so different from things I imagine. Fellowship with You fills my life with grace – imagination doesn’t. Imaginations do not turn my loneliness into sweet fellowship. Imagination does not transform my emptiness and depression into fullness and joy. It does not have the power to change my confusion into clarity of thought and soul-transforming understandings of You in areas where before all there was was dry concepts that did not move my soul. 
	Your presence is so real, dear Lord, that I know that when I am unmoved in my prayer times it means I must not be experiencing Your presence enough. Dear Father, I want this morning to be one of those mornings when I experience it in great measure. Give me the grace to seek hard after You for as long as it takes this morning, and with whatever amount of energy it will require, so that I can experience Your turning Your face toward me in blessed fellowship and communion. I want to be near You this morning. Light a fire of delight in You this morning that will burn all day long. 

15 My eyes are ever on the LORD

	When I get into a good movie or TV show, my eyes are glued to it. I get irritated if someone blocks my view even for a few moments. I walk into the kitchen not even looking where I am walking so I won’t miss something. Oh Lord, what a tragic state of affairs it is when my eyes are more glued to a meaningless, worldly, fictional drama than my soul is to the greatest reality in the universe! Watching the show does nothing but satisfy a few shallow impulses of the flesh for an incredibly short amount of time; gazing upon Your glory pours grace into my life that I will treasure one billion years from now. Oh Lord, give me enough of a glimpse of Your glory right now so that my soul will be hooked and want to keep gazing all through the weekend.
	Start preparing Your servant for Sunday, I pray. I don’t want to show up at church and be a drag on the whole congregation because my heart is cold and hard and not ready for worship. By the time Sunday morning arrives let my heart be white-hot and full of kindling ready to burst into flame the moment I am there with the saints in Your Temple, where Your glory is most wonderfully revealed. Oh Lord, please, please rescue me from becoming so dead that even being in Your household with Your people in Your Holy Place as Your bride has no special effect on my heart. Oh God, save me from that! Help Your servant fix his eyes on You so intently through this weekend that the systems of joy will come together like a “perfect storm” when those lights dim and the saints of the Most High God begin singing Your praises. 

Attribute to behold, desire, experience & enjoy: The God whose presence is real 
Promise to trust: You will fill me with joy in Your presence. 
What will result if I experience this attribute today: Gladness and joy, Greater love and desire for God (and all those He loves), Peace and calmness, A greater abiding presence of Christ in the heart, Experiential knowledge of the love that surpasses knowledge