DAILY DEVOTIONAL – May 19, 2020
“Keep Your Hands Up!“
Prayer: Almighty God, Your ways are perfect, Your love is pure and Your faithfulness to us is unwavering. In the death and resurrection of Your Son Jesus, You have given us every reason to trust You and give You control. Lord, help us to trust You with our whole life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Scripture: Psalm 27:1, 7-14
1The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud;
be gracious to me and answer me!
8 You have said, “Seek my face.”
My heart says to you,
“Your face, Lord, do I seek.”
9 Hide not your face from me.
Turn not your servant away in anger,
O you who have been my help.
Cast me not off; forsake me not,
O God of my salvation!
10 For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
but the Lord will take me in.
11 Teach me your way, O Lord,
and lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
12 Give me not up to the will of my adversaries;
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they breathe out violence.
13 I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!
14 Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!
Devotional – “Keep Your Hands Up”
The book of Psalms is not only a beautiful collection of prayers, poetry and liturgical songs, it is a book of the Bible written from within the trenches of life. There are many different authors of the Psalms, but the majority of them were written by King David. Although as Scripture says in Acts 13, David was a “man after God’s heart,” there were many times David followed his own heart and suffered for it. What made David such a great king and such a great man of faith was not the purity of his heart or of his life, it was the fact that even in the midst of his own sinfulness and in the midst of the most distressing times in his life, his trust was in the forgiveness and faithfulness of God and of His promises.
From the writings of David’s own hand, we can clearly see that he was a man who struggled just as we do, a man whose life was not void of heartbreak and hardship just because God sustained him as the King of Israel, and a man who fought the good fight of faith and fought against his own flesh and his own doubts as he lived by faith and not by sight. Time and again in the Psalms we see David pouring his heart out to God without reservation and without restraint. Psalm 27 is a great example of that. David starts out his prayer to God in verse 1 confident in the presence and promises of God. By verse 7, after David spends verses 2-6 recalling all of the adversity standing against him, David changes his tone. He now begins to cry out to God, asks God to not hide His face and not to forsake him in his time of need.
Just as we do, David’s life and faith were filled with ups and downs. Times where he stood high atop the mountain of faith and times where he lifted his hands outstretched to the heavens from within the darkness of the valley, pleading for an answer from God and for His deliverance. As you read about the life of David throughout the rest of Scripture, you see a clear pattern. Whenever David kept his hands up and reaching toward heaven, the Lord was faithful to deliver him and provide for Him every single time. Whenever David lowered his hands in order to take control and take matters into his own hands, the results were nothing short of devastating.
In his book Making Today Count for Eternity, author Kent Crockett tells a story that reminds us of the power of surrender, the power of God’s love and faithfulness and the danger of trying to take matters into our own hands when life seems out of control.
It was 1 a.m. when the phone of Chicago surgeon Leo Winters rang and woke him up. Winters was a highly acclaimed Chicago surgeon. The hospital said that a young boy had been tragically mangled in a late-night car accident. Dr. Winters’ hands were probably the only ones in the city skilled enough to save the boy.
The quickest route to the hospital took the doctor through a dangerous neighborhood, but since time was critical, he decided to take the risk. Driving through the worst part of the neighborhood, he came to a stoplight. While waiting at the light a man in a gray hat and dirty flannel shirt jerked open the door, pulled him out of his seat, and screamed, “Give me your car!”
Winters tried to explain that he was a surgeon on the way to an emergency, but the thief refused to listen. Watching the thief drive away in his car, Dr. Winters realized his phone was still in it. Now left standing in a dangerous neighborhood still a ways from the hospital, the doctor frantically looked for a phone while hurrying on foot to the hospital; but no payphone was to be found and no businesses were open at 1 a.m. When he finally got to the hospital, more than an hour had passed. Dr. Winters burst through the hospital doors and ran to the nurses’ station.
The nurse on duty sadly shook her head as she saw Dr. Winters approaching. “I’m sorry, doctor, but you’re too late. The boy died about thirty minutes ago. His father is in the chapel if you want to see him. He is awfully upset. He couldn’t understand why you never came to help.”
Dr. Winters ran down the hallway and entered the chapel, desperate to explain to the grieving father what had happened. To his shock and dismay, when he entered the chapel Dr. Winters found a man weeping at the altar, wearing a grey hat and a dirty flannel shirt. When the father looked up to see Dr. Winters, he fell to his knees realizing the horrible mistake he had made.
In his attempt to take matters into his own hands, this father pushed away the only person who could have saved his son.
As sinful and fallen human beings, there is so much we cannot see and so much we do not understand. However, God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving and ever faithful. This is why He is the One true God. Necessarily then, God’s timing, God’s will and His ways will not always be apparent to us, make sense to us or be in line with what our broken minds want to see happen. As Scripture says in Isaiah 55:8-9:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Thank God that His ways are not our ways. If we are honest with God and with ourselves, as David was, we must confess that our ways have proven only to bring about pain and disappointment. When life is most chaotic, when things seem most our of control, and when we find ourselves in the depths of the darkness of the valley, the only hope that we have and the only response we should have is to keep our hands up in praise and worship of God, remembering His Word and trusting in His faithfulness and power that raised Jesus from the dead after He paid for our sins on the cross and died the death we deserved.
It is faith alone in Jesus, not faith in taking matters into our own hands, that will enable us to rejoice with David even when surrounded by enemies and adversity, and say, “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
Well, thank you for spending some time with me today in God’s Word, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
