Celebrating the Source of our Strength
"I love You, Lord, my strength." Psalm 18:1
“Gratitude is not something we give to God because he wants to make sure we know how much trouble he went to over us," distinguishes John Ortberg Jr. in When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box. Instead, he proclaims, "Gratitude is the gift God gives us that enables us to be blessed by all his other gifts, the way our taste buds enable us to enjoy the gift of food. Without gratitude, our lives degenerate into envy, dissatisfaction, and complaints, taking what we have for granted and always wanting more.”
So it is, then, that a Psalm 18:1 state is a work of His grace. Without that perspective, needing and finding strength part from my own is disconcerting, even dis-embodying. I've been taken over, my flesh will rankle. Here I go again, my introspective measures will complain. Maybe soon, I aspire, I'll have built up the character to boast in my own brand.
In place of that pride, the psalmist has learned to celebrate that the Lord's strength completely subsumes his own. Every instance where God, to use the language of the New Testament, proves His perfection in the psalmist's lack of it is an instance to launch into song rather than self-centeredness. Reflecting on the ways in which the Lord works in, through, and around him increases the psalmist's affection.
As that affection increases right alongside maturation, so does the psalmist's declaration. The acknowledgment that the Lord is his strength is the psalmist's elevator speech before there were elevators. If we only go one verse with him, he wants to make sure that we notice the Lord before we take note of the psalmist's eloquence. As His goodness to us, in particular, becomes the center of our song, our petty aspirations to our own corner of our lives in which to brag become less important. Every stronghold of our self-justification He takes over is evidence that He is mighty to save to the uttermost.
“Gratitude is not something we give to God because he wants to make sure we know how much trouble he went to over us," distinguishes John Ortberg Jr. in When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box. Instead, he proclaims, "Gratitude is the gift God gives us that enables us to be blessed by all his other gifts, the way our taste buds enable us to enjoy the gift of food. Without gratitude, our lives degenerate into envy, dissatisfaction, and complaints, taking what we have for granted and always wanting more.”
So it is, then, that a Psalm 18:1 state is a work of His grace. Without that perspective, needing and finding strength part from my own is disconcerting, even dis-embodying. I've been taken over, my flesh will rankle. Here I go again, my introspective measures will complain. Maybe soon, I aspire, I'll have built up the character to boast in my own brand.
In place of that pride, the psalmist has learned to celebrate that the Lord's strength completely subsumes his own. Every instance where God, to use the language of the New Testament, proves His perfection in the psalmist's lack of it is an instance to launch into song rather than self-centeredness. Reflecting on the ways in which the Lord works in, through, and around him increases the psalmist's affection.
As that affection increases right alongside maturation, so does the psalmist's declaration. The acknowledgment that the Lord is his strength is the psalmist's elevator speech before there were elevators. If we only go one verse with him, he wants to make sure that we notice the Lord before we take note of the psalmist's eloquence. As His goodness to us, in particular, becomes the center of our song, our petty aspirations to our own corner of our lives in which to brag become less important. Every stronghold of our self-justification He takes over is evidence that He is mighty to save to the uttermost.
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