Psa 4:1	HEAR me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have relieved me in my distress; Have mercy on me, and hear my prayer.
Psa 4:2	How long, O you sons of men, Will you turn my glory to shame? How long will you love worthlessness And seek falsehood? Selah
Psa 4:3	But know that the LORD has set apart[fn1] for Himself him who is godly; The LORD will hear when I call to Him.
Psa 4:4	Be angry, and do not sin. Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still. Selah
Psa 4:5	Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, And put your trust in the LORD.
Psa 4:6	There are many who say, "Who will show us any good?" LORD, lift up the light of Your countenance upon us.
Psa 4:7	You have put gladness in my heart, More than in the season that their grain and wine increased.
Psa 4:8	I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; For You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.

Tonight I'm restless. I can't sleep because I think too much. But how do you tell your mind to be still? not quite sure yet. But here is what I must know.

Faith, faith is the anvil on which I must pound out every care and every doubt. Worry it seems is a symptom of fear and fear has no place where love abounds. So perhaps this is a question of love.

It is an easy thing to say God loves me, it is a completely different matter to believe it. Why there is so much difficulty probably lies in our inherent desire to earn affection by having some inherent worth. But divine love does not exist on these lines. Divine love seems not to give affection, but to give completely itself.

Perfect love casts out fear, that's what we must know. That's why we can sleep at night. Not because we have worth, not because we micromanage, not because we have stacked the deck, but because love is perfected. But again this is something that has to be revealed to the soul as something more than can be found empirically.

The Lord continually says cry out to him, that he is our rock. We must do this, we must cling to and cry out. No man ever loved that dared not cling to his beloved. We have to stop marching toward some goal. There is nothing to march towards, it's already here. We just have to believe, we have to cling to it, and depend on it more than ourselves to pull us through.

Psa 56:3
What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.

Even when the deck seems stacked and all your failures are calling you by name, there is no need to be afraid. Fear comes, disappointment rages, but the anchor holds. We must trust in him, even when the storm is raging.

To the Chief Musician. Set to "Do Not Destroy." A Michtam of David when he fled from Saul into the cave.
BE merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me!
For my soul trusts in You;

And in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge,
Until these calamities have passed by.
I will cry out to God Most High,
To God who performs all things for me.

He shall send from heaven and save me;
He reproaches the one who would swallow me up.
Selah
God shall send forth His mercy and His truth.

My soul is among lions;
I lie among the sons of men
Who are set on fire,
Whose teeth are spears and arrows,
And their tongue a sharp sword.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
Let Your glory be above all the earth.

They have prepared a net for my steps;
My soul is bowed down;
They have dug a pit before me;
Into the midst of it they themselves have fallen.
Selah

My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast;
I will sing and give praise.

Awake, my glory!
Awake, lute and harp!
I will awaken the dawn.

I will praise You, O Lord, among the peoples;
I will sing to You among the nations.

For Your mercy reaches unto the heavens,
And Your truth unto the clouds.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
Let Your glory be above all the earth

Psalm 57

Not even going to lie, yesterday was rough. It was one of those days where you expect everything to go your way and you walk home with your tail between your legs, asking why did I even get out of bed. But one has to resist temptation. You have to resist the temptation to give up, to doubt; to doubt whether your prayers are even being heard. I'm learning, I'm learning that faith isn't an exclamation point put on events that go your way when you need them to. Faith is looking at the mountain and saying move. It's reaching out towards your goals when you know you alone can't lay hold of them.

He tells us all things are possible if we believe, not all things are possible if everything lines up right. I've heard it said that faith doesnt look into the mirror to see what's there, but rather Faith has its own mirror that reflects what is possible. Let's lay it down. There is the temptation to say the storm will swamp the ship, but what are we told. If we cry out to God, he perfroms all his purposes for us. Things may look bleak and may feel even worse, but Christ slept in the boat while it was tossing and that sounds like a much better plan to me than trying to plot the course of every wave.

So here is the final word. We have to praise him, we have to praise not in the hopes that something will happen if we do, but because we know he has set his face towards us and he is worthy of our praise. There is one sure sign of free heart, its filled with song. You can't help it. And now I will follow the psalmist example I will sing unto the nations his praises and not look to what is going on around me. I'll sing for his mercy and I will sing because his faithfullness cannot fail.

Vision

Where [there is] no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy [is] he.
Prov 29:18

We have to change the way we think. We have to change the way we see ourselves. A mastered ability to pick apart our own faults is by no means the reflection of a productive use of time.

Catch a vision, see the person you are supposed to be. Christ tells us the old man is past away and all things are made new. So why not behave like you are a new man? Why question that feeling in your gut that says, "maybe you should talk to that guy" or "just spend a little more time with me this morning?"

I think maybe we make things to complicated. Christ said his yolk is easy and his burden light. So why not take him at his word and get to plowing? Simple faith doesn't ask questions, but more importantly it doesn't wait. It doesn't need to be convinced there is a benefit to acting.

So we, Your people and sheep of Your pasture,
Will give You thanks forever;
We will show forth Your praise to all generations.
Psalm 79:13

There were two things I wanted to know as I walked to my final this morning; 1. why did I ever take a Botany course? and 2, why am I still in school?

It's an incredible thought to think of oneself as being a person set apart, being raised in a place of safety. We really are His people and he has obligated himself to take care of us. We didn't just stumble into His place one day and start getting free meals. He actually sought us out and leads us into His habitation.

This brings me to my final thought. Why not be thankful? not just "Oh Lord thank you for our daily bread," but "Oh Lord thank you for the bread, the grass, the trees!" I think there is a clear line to be drawn between having an appreciation for one's position and welfare, and truly being thankful for the opportunity to have and be at all.

When you read the last part of the Psalm it says, "We will show forth your praise to all generations." Think about that, we have the opportunity through our lives not just to show our appreciation for what He has done, but to praise him for it. We, the work of His hands, get to show His praise through our lives even after we are long gone.

Seeking

When You said, "Seek My face,"
My heart said to You, "Your face, LORD, I will seek."
Psalm 27:8

Seek the LORD while He may be found,
Call upon Him while He is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
Let him return to the LORD,
And He will have mercy on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD.

"For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.

"For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,
And do not return there,
But water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower
And bread to the eater,

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

"For you shall go out with joy,
And be led out with peace;
The mountains and the hills
Shall break forth into singing before you,
And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree,
And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree;
And it shall be to the LORD for a name,
For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off."
Isaiah 55:6-13


"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
Matt 6:33-34

I find it fitting to start this blog with one thought; I'm not going to worry about anything anymore. I will do one thing and it is the thing I have been told to do. I will seek the Lord's face and let Him take care of the rest. May sound crazy, may go against everything my body and mind are telling me, but I do not see any other options and to be honest I don't want any. So with this in mind feel free to make as many comments or criticisms as you like, but just remeber I know where most of you live!