I just love you Lord….but I don’t feel like that is enough. I’m such a mess.
Because she loves me, I will rescue her.
But is it enough to love you? Shouldn’t I be doing more to make myself, I don’t know, better?
Remember me. Think on me. Look to me.
Psalm 40 is a beautiful reminder of the exquisite mercy of our God. True grace is that God saves us from ourselves. From the very turmoil we created. From the circumstances we chased after but now they are killing our soul. From our disappointing inability to change ourselves. From the mess that we sometimes think that we are.
God saves us even when the mud pit I am stuck in is of my own doing. I ended up there because of my own sins. “Troubles without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs on my head and my heart has failed me.” Have you ever felt like your sins have weaved a spider web around you so that you are completely surrounded? The more you move the more covered in webs you become. It’s impossible to get free. Sometimes we like to think of ourselves as stoic and just when we stay in our messy pit: “I made my bed, I’ll lie in it.” We punish ourselves.
Yet God does not leave us in the mud pit we so independently dug with our own hands, in our own blindness. The beauty of mercy is that we don’t have to stay there, slowly sinking into the quicksand. We have a rescuer who is willing and able to stoop down and extend help. We need only look to Him. “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”
God’s desire for us is never to remain stuck, buried alive in the consequences of our own sins. Instead, God demonstrated his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners - still in the miry mud pit of our mess - Christ died for us.
May His mercy and grace surround us as we learn to wait patiently and expectantly on our rescuer to set us on firm ground, anchored in the truths of God’s love for us and His power to restore, redeem and make us whole. May God put a new song in our mouths this year! A sweet song of deliverance and rescue!
“I am poor and needy, YET the Lord takes thought and plans for me. You are my help and my deliverer!”
-Kelly Joyce (you can read more of her blog at www.triumphantly.net)
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