Stevemidkiff's Blog

THE PALACE OF BLESSING Psalm 1:1-3

SATURATE IN YOUR BEAUTY V.2

DELIGHT IN YOUR SATISFACTION

But his delight

DELIGHT IN YOUR STRUCTURE

is in the law of the Lord

DRENCH IN YOUR SPEECH

and in his law doth he meditate

DELIGHT IN YOUR SCHEDULE

day and night

ARE WE DELIGHTING IN GOD’S SATISFACTION?

But his delight. What is our delight

The term delight means pleasure, it’s choosing what gratifies,

Delight is where we find our enjoyment & pleasure.

King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that he sought to find out acceptable words:

and that which was written was upright, even words of truth Eccl. 12:10.

The Word “acceptable” is delight. God’s Word is what brings us delight.

He wrote with words that were both true & aesthetically pleasing.

The term rendered acceptable is the same word that is rendered delight in Psalms 1:2.

The Word “upright” means straight or straightening in contrast to crooked & bent.

We live in a crooked bent world. Only Gods Word will straighten us out. Only Gods

Word will make us upright & righteous. Our World is twisted. Gods Word makes us straight

The Word “truth” is in contrast to lies & deception. We live in an age of fake news,

where false & corrupting words are perpetually inundating us. Everything is being besmirched.

Truth is under attack. What should be honored is being defamed. What should be defamed is

weirdly being honored. It’s vogue now to impugn someone’s character. It’s popular now to tarnish,

taint, smear & slander.

Only Gods Word is Truth.

Only Gods Word is delightfully acceptable.

Only Gods Word is straight

Only Gods Word develops in us righteousness

It’s interesting in Proverbs 31:13 we read of the women who:

Seeks wool & flax & works willingly with her hands.

The word “willingly” is the same term delight and could be phrased “hands of delight”.

Her hand is delighted to do things for her loved ones.

This is a feel good kind of labor that satisfies as she sacrifices

for those she delights in. This is taking pleasure in & choosing

to do things for those you value.

When we value something we invest time in it.

Are we valuing Gods Word?

Are we handling Gods Word with hands of delight.

The Theological workbook says that delight means

to feel great favor toward an object, with the suggestion

of a deep emotional involvement.

In Genesis 3:6 we read:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,

and that it was pleasant to the eyes,

and a tree to be desired to make one wise,

she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat,

and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

There are three terms in this verse that are similar to delight or pleasurable.

The first is good,

then pleasant

then to be desired.

Very close to the three words of Rom. 12:1,2 in reference

to the opposite end of the spectrum, when referring to the will of God,

which is good, acceptable and perfect.

When God’s Word transforms & renews our mind & heart,

His will & the design of God is a delight & pleasure to us.

When Satan’s temptations deceive us

then evil becomes our delight & the twists of wickedness

become good, pleasant & desirable.

It’s really up to us. It’s our call!

What are we delighting in?

Are we letting the Word of God dwell in us richly!!!

DISSECTING THE DILEMMA OF DESERTION PSALMS 13

THE PAIN V.1-2

FORSAKEN V.1

DISREGARD

How long wilt thou forget me, o lord? Forever?

Really! Are You joking with me God? It’s been Long enough, GOD—

DISCOUNT

How long will you hide thy face from me?

You’ve ignored me long enough.

FRUSTRATED V.2

How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?

We’ve turned Your back to us long enough.

FALTERING

How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?

We’ve been in this squalor long enough

We’ve carried this humiliation long enough

Our gut ache of idiotic oppressive controlling fool has lasted long enough

These arrogant enemies have looked down their noses at us Long enough

THE PRAYER V.3-4

REQUESTS V.3

Consider and hear me, O Lord my God:

It’s high time You’ve paid attention to us

It’s time for You to take a good look at us, GOD, aren’t You our Father?

We want You to man up look at us eye to eye,

REASONS V.4

Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;

We’re mind boggled! We feel like giving up! We’re really aching & beat up!

RIVALS

Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him;

And those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved.

Our enemies are full of mocking looks

They put us down. They want us to flop

They laugh at our face when they think they’ve got us down

THE PRAISE V.5-6

FREEDOM V.5

But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.

We throw ourselves full bore into Your arms!

Our only Joy is feeling Your saving touches!

FULFILLMENT V.6

I will sing unto the Lord, because He hath dealt bountifully with me.

We’re ecstatic celebrating Your rescue.

We’re booming out Your praises in Your answers to our longing prayers

Lament is the act of pouring out our soul.

The Scripture is bursting in lament.

We hear the roaring of lament in the Psalms, in Jobs book,

in Lamentations & much of the literature composed by the Prophets.

Lament is thoughtfully crafted,

Lament is brutally honest speech

Lament can be accusatory,

Lament may appear to be self-serving,

Others may think we are bordering on anger

when our grief pours out in lament…

But lament is pain-drenched thoughts & emotions

that fester in the deepest recesses of our soul

Often lament is challenging God.

We feel He hasn’t come through for us in

the way we believe He is supposed to.

At times lament is challenging others

for their superficial responses,

for their lame excuses or

for their hypocritical Superficiality and

for their backstabbing betrayals

Lament is unmistakably discordant & rife with tension.

Lament holds nothing back,

Lament expends itself fully so nothing

that must be said remains unsaid.

At other times lament is silent with others knowing

their scheming conspiracies & empty apostasies

Lament is casting our full selves on the fathomless mercy

of God in prayer,

Lament depends on the reality that only Gods mercy is big enough to bear witness to our bitter accusations knowing our Lord receives our lament & lets us live.

God is holy, make no mistake about it & lament supremely honors this truth,

Lament points out with equal candor to the reality that as human beings, we arrive at God’s throne broken & sinful

Yet we come in this scandal that surrounds us with hearts swollen & bursting in lament!

And what we find is the lover of our souls who passionately wants us & welcomes us with arms wide open to our angst

and lament.

Adapted from The Travelogue Of The Interior

Can “Myth Become Fact”

C. S. Lewis gave us permission to wonder at God & to deepen our enjoyment of the true story of His Son

Jesus reversed of death,

Jesus rescued His bride,

Jesus tore down evil,

Jesus ruined the dragon,

Jesus reigns now forevermore.

We see in Jesus that nothing is wasted under God’s sovereign authorship of the universe, not even our fictions.

God, You rule in heaven’s court;

Yours is the authority over every authority.

We don’t want to stumble in our lives

So we fall in dependence before You

How You must grieve at our bigotry,

our petty squabbles,

our failure to defend the weak & fatherless,

our attitude toward the poor & oppressed,

our failure to rescue the weak & the needy

Please let us untwist those that are tangled up & oppressed

We stumble around

We get it wrong most of the time.

You designed us weaker then angels

But lifted us above them

You’ve exalted us into Your the palace of Your presence

You’ve given us honor & privilege,

Let us live these privileges out

Let us practice our position

Not everyone gets to stand in front of a King

Not everyone is invited to talk Your ears off

Loosen our tongues

Swell our hearts with Your words

Flood us with Your feelings

Forgive us,

Raise us up

Lead us

Teach us

And change us!

Ps. 82 paraphrased

What would our lives be like

if we were busy confessing our own sins

instead of confessing everyone else’s sin?

We confess

we are like sheep

prone to thorns & brambles.

Please Jesus; don’t tire of looking for us

Keep lifting us out of the messes we get ourselves into,

Don’t give up on us!

Don’t give us over to our raunchiness

Give us hinds feet in high places to scale Your heights

When God Doesn’t Zap Away Our Sin

“God promises grace to battle sin & to overcome sin.

We believe that God gives grace to us.”

This is not something we deserve;

it isn’t that He owes us,

but He gives it anyway.

It is undeserved,

His overflow of love for us.

We long for His grace—

His grace to put sin to death,

His grace to bring righteousness to life,

His grace to be who & what God calls us to be.

God gives that grace,

but for some reason—

His good reasons—

it doesn’t come in the form we would prefer.

God instead gives it not in the form we want

but in the form we need.

We want God to zap away our sin,

We want Him to instantly & permanently remove it.

Those desires,

those addictions,

those idolatries—

we want them to be lifted away & to be gone instantly.

God could do this.

He has the strength & the power.

And occasionally he does do this,

He removes the sin & the temptation to sin in an instant,

and it never comes back with the same strength & the same force.

But more commonly God’s grace

is not manifested in the instant obliteration of a sin.

Instead, His grace is in a new desire to destroy that sin.

God does not zap away our sin,

but gives us a new hatred for it

He gives a new desire to do the hard work of battling it.

He does not sovereignly remove it in a moment,

but He extends grace so we can battle it for a lifetime.

He extends grace

so we can see continuous, incremental success,

We know our weakness

We know our crying out for His strength.

He gives what we need,

even if it isn’t quite what we want.

This, is grace.

This, is undeserved favor from a loving God.

This, somehow,

must be far better for us than the alternative.

He confirms us saying

‘My grace is sufficient for you,

for My power is made perfect in weakness.’

Therefore we will boast all the more gladly of our weaknesses,

so that the power of Christ may rest upon us.”

Adapted from Challis

“We are such weak creatures that any regularly returning duty

is apt to degenerate into a lifeless form.

The tendency of reading the Word by a fixed rule may, in some minds,

be to create this skeleton religion.

This is to be the peculiar sin of the last days –

“Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.”

Robert Murray M’Cheyne

The power of our faith is God’s Word

We need to continually hear His voice

His words are creative

His voice speaks life into being

The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper.

Next suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out.

Is one’s first feeling,

“Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,”

or is it a feeling of disappointment,

and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?

If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.

You see, one is beginning to wish that the distorted was a little more distorted.

If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see undistorted as distorted,

then we’re seeing what’s good as bad itself.

Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything —

God & our friends & ourselves included — as bad & not be able to stop doing it:

we will be twisted for ever into a universe of pure hatred.

Adapted C S Lewis