he Lord and His emotions? you may ask. Something that we may not know or acknowledge is the fact that we can feel all of the emotions we feel because God shared His nature with us. Even more, we see all through scripture how God expressed His emotions towards man; we see Him express them towards His children and for His children. For example, the other day as I watched season one, episode one of The Chosen series with my baby girl – Nonye. I was reminded of Isaiah chapter 43 so we decided to go take a peep for ourselves. After reading the chapter, we had the same things to say; the first half of the chapter captured the heartfelt love letter to His children. Through the prophet Isaiah, He wrote the things He would do for us – He would swim oceans for us, part seas, fight for us, protect us, and much more. These and more He did for His children but then turned around to spit all of His love in His face. The second half of the chapter broke my heart as I read through the chapter; because all God’s children did was spit all of His love in His face.
This same thing I see play out in the book of Psalms, chapter 95. The writings of the psalmist are ones I love to read, I also highly recommend it as a good place to start to read for beginners in this faith walk. The chapters of the Psalmist capture the vulnerability of man, capture a man in his lowest, in his highest, in his in-between, and also help to guide us to pray from the core of our souls. Furthermore, the book of Psalms doesn’t just stop at capturing the emotions of man, it also captures communion between the almighty God and man. If we took our time to study the Psalms, we would see that in between – we can see deep revelations from heaven that could have only spurred from sweet fellowship with the Holy Spirit. As I transition to the core of this week’s blog post, I encourage you to study the chapters of the Psalmists, it could help your communion and fellowship with the Lord. Thanks to a book like Psalms, I know I can be real with Jesus, I can sprawl on the floor, cry out to Him, journal, scream out to Him in excitement, and so on.
Now, enough about us! Can we for a moment shift our gaze to the maker of the heavens and the earth – the one who gives us life and we find expression? Many times, we are so consumed with our needs, wants, and desires that we forget God has needs and desires. During the last days Jesus spent with His disciples; He told Peter the plans of the devil. The devil planned to sift Peter as wheat. As I write this, I find Jesus’s choice of word intense; He could have said it in many ways but He portrayed it graphically – to emphasize how ruthless the devil’s plan was for Peter – Luke 22:31-34. Jesus went ahead to say, “I have prayed for you when you turn back – strengthen your brothers”. It is glaring that Jesus Christ prayed for Peter, and ensured his salvation so that other men may be strengthened too. Jesus Christ did not save Peter just for himself and His family. Jesus saved Peter for the body of Christ, thank God he aligned.
I shared that example to point to us that God has saved us for Himself, for His splendor, to execute His agenda on earth just as much as He cares for us. This is what Psalms 95 calls us to do – it calls us to worship and obey the Lord. The Psalmist goes ahead to explicitly describe to us ways we can worship the Lord in this chapter then ends the chapter by showing us a real-life example of what happened when a people refused to love the Lord with their whole hearts. See the verses below.
For forty years I was grieved with that generation, And said it is a people who go astray in their hearts, And they do not know My ways. So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter My rest - Psalms 95:10-11
Let us take a microscopic look at these verses;
Grieved for Forty Years with a people whose hearts went astray :
this was the Lord speaking through or perhaps to the Psalmist. We see the Lord say that He was grieved for forty years. Can you imagine! For forty years, the Lord was patiently waiting for these people that He loved so much to turn their hearts to Him or perhaps learn to appreciate His lovingkindness but they did not. These are people that God fought tooth and nail to rescue from the stubborn hands of their slave masters. God went ahead to provide for their core needs as they journeyed to the promised land, oh! how the Lord cared for them. Imagine how God had to interrupt Moses’ life to go deliver these people yet they refused to learn how to love God. They refused to pay attention to the things that made God’s heart glad. What does this mean to us and our faith walk? Do you see how the bible says that He grieved with that generation? That means perhaps there was a generation that made Him extremely glad or perhaps there were certain people in that generation that made Him happy. For example; in Abraham’s generation – he perhaps was about the only one who made God happy, and who loved God with all of His heart, the same could be said about Noah, David, Caleb, Joshua, Moses, and Deborah in their generations. My dear friend, I hope that this rekindles, and strengthens your dedication to loving the Lord with all of your heart and a resolve to make Him happy and proud.
A people that do not know God’s ways:
You see at the beginning of this blog post, I shared with you how I watched an episode of a series with my friend. Although my rekindled friendship with Nonye is less than a year old, we already know certain ways, and things that we like and do not appreciate. The beauty of this friendship is that we keep talking things through to come to a mutual understanding of our stands and ways. I think this is how friendships; romantic or unromantic buds. After many years of interacting with my biological father, I can interpret his spoken and unspoken words or body language. I believe this same way, God has expectations from us to understand His ways, and His signs when He communicates with us. Sadly, many of us are so engrossed and stuck up in our ways that we have not given our time to understand our beloved father. Imagine in a whole generation, Only Moses paid the price to understand and know God’s ways. Aside from enjoying intimacy with God, knowing God’s ways could help us and save us from costly errors.
God’s rest:
God’s rest is a destination here on earth and even in the afterlife; God’s rest encapsulates God’s desire for us to rest from all of our labor here on earth and also eternal rest forever. You see as we journey through life, and fight through battles, God has a plan to give us rest all around – only if we would hold steadfast to Him and love Him with all of our heart. You see King David, who wrote most of the chapters of the books of Psalm fought and was faced with numerous challenges for years. His years of fighting and surmounting challenges are the things that birthed the chapters of the Psalms – he was a man devoted to touching the heart of God. See what God did for him as recorded in II Samuel 7:1 – After the king was settled in his palace and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him. You see that the Lord had and saw to His plan to give him rest on all sides, so does God have for you, my dear. Hold steadfast to the Lord, seek His heart, ask Him to help you love Him as you journey with Him and you will enter into His rest in Jesus’ name. Finally, see David’s testimony at the end of everything – For David, after he had served his generation by the will of God, fell asleep, was buried with his fathers, and saw corruption– Acts 13:36. King David lived out his purpose in his generation; a good question to reflect on is, “are we living out our purposes on earth in our generation” More beautiful is that unlike king David, we would not see corruption because Jesus defeated death forever. Therefore, God’s rest for us here and beyond is guaranteed only if we desist from grieving our Lord.
I declare that we are marvelously helped to make glad the city of God in Jesus’ name, Amen.