Seek the Lord, and Don't Strike Out with Bases Loaded

 Today we sang Psalm 107. This Psalm is a picture of the Lord mercifully disciplining his people. The Psalm goes through several scenarios of people in trouble who call out to the Lord and he saves them. There is a refrain repeated four times where the people thank the Lord for his unfailing love. At the end of the Psalm, it encourages the wise to meditate on all these things. There are two options, to desperately call upon the Lord in times of blessing, or to desperately call upon the Lord in times of discipline. The first requires greater maturity. In a way, times of blessing and prosperity are a greater trial than hardship. If we do not desperately call upon the Lord in times of blessing, we will end up needing his discipline, which is not pleasant.

We also read Ephesians 1. Paul prays for the eyes of their hearts to be open. Knowledge of God is not “2 + 2 = 4” knowledge. It is heart knowledge more than mind knowledge. He also talked about the hope that is set before us. Hebrews says we have a great cloud of witnesses. It’s like a baseball game, and our generation is at bat. The greats of the past, the Hank Aarons and Babe Ruths, are sitting in the stands. The more recent folks are watching from the dugout. And they’re all watching our generation, at bat, to see if we will succeed or fail. I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to set my mind so much on the things of the present that I forget the greater reality. I want to have the vision ever before me, desperately seeking God especially in times of peace, so that I do not fall away.

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