I love the LORD, because He has heard
My voice and my supplications.
Because He has inclined His ear to me,
Therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live.—Ps 116:1-2
Then I called upon the name of the LORD:
“O LORD, I implore You, deliver my soul!”
Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
Yes, our God is merciful.
The LORD preserves the simple;
I was brought low, and He saved me.
Return to your rest, O my soul,
For the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.
For You have delivered my soul from death,
My eyes from tears,
And my feet from falling.
I will walk before the LORD
In the land of the living.—Psalm 116:4-9
Often when I read the psalms, I feel so grateful for their honesty. Why do I love the Lord? Color me shallow along with David...I love Him because He hears my prayers and answers them. I love Him because He first loved me. I love Him because He saved ME and wants a personal relationship with ME! My love toward God is, in a way, a self-centered one. When I accepted His free gift of salvation, I brought nothing to the relationship but me and my ever present need. God on the other hand brings it all and does it all. So why, I asked myself, does this relationship even work? Why don’t I become inured to His goodness and His steadfast love toward me which never ceases? Why don’t I feel resentment toward Him because I owe Him big time and could never repay Him for what He has done? Why don’t I take Him for granted and esteem Him lightly? Why? Because He has filled me with..
GRATITUDE!
Because He has replaced my heart of stone with a new heart of flesh and has put a new song in my mouth. I was brought low and He saved me. When God picked me up out of the pit and the miry clay I was helpless, desperate, and very much alone. My sins had gone over my head...there was, in my mind, no remedy. NO WAY HOME. NO WAY BACK INTO HIS GOOD GRACES. NO DO-OVERS. “THIS MESS WAS SO BIG AND SO DEEP AND SO TALL. I COULD NOT PICK IT UP. THERE WAS NO WAY AT ALL.”
BUT GOD...
who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved ME,
even when I was dead in trespasses, made ME alive together with Christ
What shall I render to the LORD
For all His benefits toward me?
I will take up the cup of salvation,
And call upon the name of the LORD.—Ps 116:13-14
“Thou hast loosed my bonds,"— “freedom from bondage binds me to thy service. He who is loosed from the bonds of sin, death, and hell should rejoice to wear the easy yoke of the great Deliverer.”
“I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving."
I will bring to my God the thanksgiving of my heart. My innermost being shall worship Him in gratitude. I will make His footsteps MY pathway. I will give myself to Him and then by His will to others in order that they might see the light that God shines in my heart to give others the light of the knowledge of Him in the face of Jesus Christ.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.—Romans 12:1
Beloved…Do your own reading through Psalm 116 and highlight each and every reason you have to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. The result will be an overwhelming gratitude and an increased desire to walk as the prophet Micah exhorts…
With what shall I come before the LORD,
And bow myself before the High God?
Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings,
With calves a year old?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
Ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?
