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December 25, 2021 9:00 pm
Wishing for a fresh start lasting longer than, say… mid-February? For a new year, author Dane Ortlund fuels us with the lasting hope of Psalm 121.
From now until the end of 2021, with your gift of any amount to FamilyLife, as our thanks we’ll send you a copy of Dane’s devotional book, In the Lord I Take Refuge: 150 Daily Devotions through the Psalms. And because of generous donors, any gift given before the end of the year will be doubled up to $1.5.
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Hi, I'm Shelby Abbott and this is Psalms for Christmas time minister with pastor and author Dean Ortman again is written a book in the Lord hundred and 50 daily devotion to the Psalms and all the gift of any amount. Not only will your donation be matched will send you a copy of deeper into the Psalms your affections for Jesus Christ. To learn more about how to give his family life today.com. Inevitably, during this time when Christmas rolls around the end of the day comes, everybody goes to sleep on Christmas night, they start to look forward to. Already, the next thing which is often New Year's and so New Year's comes with a lot of traditions and of itself one of those things happens to be resolutions where they start thinking about new beginnings.
They start thinking about what I want to do differently this year that I'm just not pleased with from this last year and we get a picture of that real human experience of what were longing for. In the Psalms as well.
And so today were to look at Psalm 121 with pastor and author Dean Ortman Dean were thinking about these things were in this Christmas season and New Year's is just around the corner. Many people have a tendency to do that to say how can I turn over a new leaf. When we learn from this Psalm specifically in Psalm 121 that we can apply to our lives will we learn who God is all over again and receive this in the spirit in which I made up we can become a Christian all over again. Read this Psalm take fresh refuge in God is so short, so maybe I could just read your Shelby for us and we can enjoy the fresh I lift my eyes to the hills where does my help come from my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. You will not let your foot be moved.
You keeps you will not slumber whole. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep we go to sleep God never does.
The Lord is your keeper means your protector. Your guardian is your bouncer. The Lord is your shade on your right hand so not only does protect you.
She keeps you in a sense comfortable. He keeps the salt off of the sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night in the Psalm. In this way, the Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and you're coming in from this time forth and forevermore application as we go into 2022. God is not with us just on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sunday.
He is with us in our going out and are coming and he's not just with us in our home or apartment or at work is not just with us in a good week we've had is with us all the time. And what we've just celebrated Christmas is proof of that in the incarnation, so brother if God's mercies are new every morning.
Lamentations 3 there are certainly new every year and let's draw fresh strength from his mercies, I gotta be honest, I feel little ambivalent about New Year's resolutions. Actually, I don't know how I feel about them. I feel the need for it every year and I understand the heart behind it. I really do. I yeah but in terms of let me do this then I know I'm in a fail by mid-February with yeah oh I know, and so we gotta handle these resolutions with such care. I mean, yes, let's resolve by the grace of God to keep growing and New Year's is a good time to do that.
But let's not act in such a way that we think. Actually our standing with God or our growth in Christ is up to us so that as we proceed through January and into February were just setting ourselves up to fail and be disappointed. Discouraged, more than we ever were. Maybe the New Year's resolution. Many of us need to make is I broken a lot of New Year's resolutions and this here. I resolve to let God love me this year. I resolve to let God be rich in mercy. Ephesians 2 to me in a way that I never have before.
What you mean by that to be melted and lifted into growth not to try to crowbar myself into growth through new resolutions on getting off the treadmill and letting God love us in a way that we have never allowed him to before.
Here's what I believe Shelby it is in our pockets of deepest shame, regret, and anguish that God loves us the most.
I think a lot of times are New Year's resolutions do not reflect that. Yeah, I think when I make resolutions and have broken them in the past. I kinda feel disappointed in myself and I think I transfer that over onto God. When I when I mess up in some form or fashion.
I think he standing there. Maybe with his arms folded kind of got a clipboard under his arm with a checklist of all the things I didn't do, but Scripture gives us a totally different picture of that what you mention from limitations. If there are new every morning is a metaphor for the fact that their new all the time. We don't need to run away from God. When we mess things up.
We need to run to him because he openly embraces us exactly right. And so if, as we mess up. We feel guilty and her conscience is feeling condemned. That's the enemy doing that if our conscience is correct and we feel convicted and it pulls us to Jesus Christ vessel Holy Spirit doing that so you if we going to do your okay we got these resolutions by well-meaning want to do by the grace of God and the power the Holy Spirit, but that we start screwing it up. It is so easy to believe in our heart that the heat of God's love has cooled just a few degrees why we believe that because that's how we are therefore honest God is not like maybe a New Year's resolution is to say I'm to get my Bible and a couple good books to help me learn that God actually his love is on another plane than what mine is.
That's my New Year's resolution to know God is really like to repent of my bad theology of what God believes about me when I break my resolutions so I want to keep going. That was as we cannot wrap up this small podcast Arizona recommend to you by Dean or Lynn in the Lord. I take refuge, 150 daily devotions through the Psalms and in addition to that, one of the books that is been super impactful in my life is another gentle and lowly, which help me peel back the layers on what my misconceptions were about and what he feels for me.
Thank you for being with us in this podcast, a game deeply grateful for you and thankful for what the Lord is doing through you and your ministry. What an honor and a joy to talk with you shall think this podcast is been a production of family life accrue ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most