We read Psalm 37 recently aloud at our Monday morning staff meeting (you can read portions of it below). As we met, tender from recent changes in health and heartache among our Staff Team, Psalm 37 reminded us of the goodness of God and all the promises He has made to us, the righteous, at just the right time.
Through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, He made the payment for our unrighteousness and sin and gave us freedom from the bondage of the law and sin through His resurrection. By His grace, we have the right to be called righteous sons and daughters of God; therefore, we can be assured of the promises of God in this Psalm as we walk humbly with Him today.
In our lives filled with trials and challenges, we come to know God in a deeper, more profound way as we go to Him, acknowledging again and again that He is God and that we simply are not. It’s not even that we want to be God, yet we often think we know of a better way – one that primarily tries to protect our comforts or avoid the fear of being fully known. But, this is not the way of God so often.
God uses these times to remind us that He’s got us all in His care, as the Psalmist David writes; in these times especially, we can find rest in Him. A type of rest that can only come from Him, one that is immeasurable, generous, and often discarded in our “busyness” in trying to resolve and take control of the unknowns of our lives.
It’s been a joy, as a Staff Team, to come to Him as a body of believers, dependent on Him, receiving from each other in our frailty, pressing on to be His hands, feet, eyes and ears to each other and the guests during this season from this place of rest in God alone.
During the Holiday Bible Weeks, we’ve seen wonderful examples of God’s proven faithfulness through generations. As guests have come who were once students, then staff, then raised their kids (bringing them here for Holiday Bible Weeks), and now seeing some of those kids who have also come through the Bible School join as volunteers to teach the next generation what it means to be loved by God and to know Him. It’s examples like these families that we can say, “God – you are faithful. We will trust you today that you will continue to be faithful.”
We can’t help but offer thanksgiving to God for all He is and desires to be in our midst as we walk through these challenges together. His promises of faithfulness, deliverance and abundance are of deep significance and help us persevere in our times of need.
We are not called to God merely for our benefit but so that we might proclaim His excellencies (1 Peter 2:9). Our prayer, in this season, is that we would continue doing just that because Christ is our Life, and we know it now more than ever and in new realities – just as He meant it to be. Many of you are also walking through seemingly impossible and challenging circumstances. As we hear of these things in your lives, we intercede on your behalf and desire that you, too, might come to know that God has all of your unknowns in His loving care. Press on to know Him; He is worth it all.
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Psalm 37:3-11, 16-19, 23-34, 37-40
“Trust in the Lord and do good;
Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the Lord;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it.
He will bring forth your righteousness as the light
And your judgment as the noonday.
Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him;
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.
Cease from anger and forsake wrath;
Do not fret; it leads only to evildoing.
For evildoers will be cut off,
But those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land.
Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more;
And you will look carefully for his place and he will not be there.
But the humble will inherit the land
And will delight themselves in abundant prosperity.
Better is the little of the righteous
Than the abundance of many wicked.
For the arms of the wicked will be broken,
But the Lord sustains the righteous.
The Lord knows the days of the blameless,
And their inheritance will be forever.
They will not be ashamed in the time of evil,
And in the days of famine they will have abundance.
The steps of a man are established by the Lord,
And He delights in his way.
When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong,
Because the Lord is the One who holds his hand.
I have been young and now I am old,
Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken
Or his descendants begging bread.
All day long he is gracious and lends,
And his descendants are a blessing.
Depart from evil and do good,
So you will abide forever.
For the Lord loves justice
And does not forsake His godly ones;
They are preserved forever,
But the descendants of the wicked will be cut off.
The righteous will inherit the land
And dwell in it forever.
The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom,
And his tongue speaks justice.
The law of his God is in his heart;
His steps do not slip.
The wicked spies upon the righteous
And seeks to kill him.
The Lord will not leave him in his hand
Or let him be condemned when he is judged.
Wait for the Lord and keep His way,
And He will exalt you to inherit the land;
When the wicked are cut off, you will see it.
Mark the blameless man, and behold the upright;
For the man of peace will have a posterity.
But transgressors will be altogether destroyed;
The posterity of the wicked will be cut off.
But the salvation of the righteous is from the Lord;
He is their strength in time of trouble.
The Lord helps them and delivers them;
He delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
Because they take refuge in Him.”
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By: April Galbraith
