Psalm 91:14-16 “Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.” This episode talks about how the promises the Lord makes to us in this verse and what is required of us. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Do We Know and Love The Lord?
Psalm 91:14-16 “Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.”
Wow, that is quite the promise that our Lord is giving us. Did you notice that He is responding to our actions in it? He starts by saying, “Those who love me, I will deliver.” The Lord is calling us to love Him. You may think this is easy, of course I love the Lord. I think it is more complicated than this. We may think we love the Lord, but do our actions support that? Do we just say that we love Him, or do we truly love Him with our whole heart? Would someone who didn’t know us and could only judge us by our actions say that we loved the Lord? What are we doing to show the Lord that we love Him? There is an article I found online titled, How to Love God According To The Bible by Victorino Q. Abrugar. (Click Here for article)
I will place a link for the article in the show notes, but I will also go over some of them with you as the Lord says He will deliver those that love Him. I want us to be delivered. One way to show God you love Him is to spend time with Him. Are we doing this? Do we make this a priority throughout our day? Think of it like this, if your loved ones spent the same amount of time with you are you spend with God, would you think they loved you? Would you feel like you were important to them? If not, what can you do differently to spend more time with the Lord?
Another way that we can show God that we love Him is to obey Him. John 14:15 says, “If you love me, obey my commandments.” This one can be a tough one. Obeying the Lord’s commandments isn’t always easy. We don’t always want to do what He wants us to do. Matthew 7:13-14 says, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. Sometimes we think, it can’t be that bad, everyone else is doing it. Even as adults we think this sometimes. More times than we would like to admit I bet. This is not the case though. Just because it seems to be the normal thing to do, doesn’t mean it is obeying God. It says right in the verse that the road is hard and leads to life, but there are few who find it. God is calling us to a better way of doing things. He is calling us to a higher way. He expects more from us because we know better and because He gives us His graces and strength to follow His commandments.
Another way to love God is to put Him first. This one is hard. We tend to want to do what we want to do and when what we want conflicts with what we thing God wants, then often times we chose what we want. Also, we tend to put God last as He is so forgiving and He is someone that we can’t see. We often put those that are most important last as we know that they will be understanding. Prayer time should be first. Father Mike said that doesn’t mean it needs to be the first thing you do in the morning, but it needs to be the first thing that you write into your schedule. If you plan to pray at night, that’s great, but think of that first and schedule the rest of your day around that so that you can make sure to get that in. Are we putting God first in our lives? I will not go over all the ways listed in the article although I do recommend you read it as there is a lot of good information about why we love God and how we can show our love for God.
The next thing the verse says is, “I will protect those who know my name.” This is another one that we may read and immediately think it’s easy as of course we know that Lord. However, do we really know the Lord? Do we spend time studying His scriptures and learning who He really is? Do we spend time doing the things that He has asked us to do? In Matthew 7:22-23 it says, “ On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.” Will God say this to us? Are we breaking God’s laws? If we are truly loving God, then we probably know Him and are trying to follow His laws. It is something to take a few minutes to think about and see if we have more work to do in either of those areas.
The verse ends with something that is again, responding to us. It says, “When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.” The Lord is asking us to act and then He will come through. God says He will answer those that call to Him. He will be with them in trouble and He will rescue them and honor them. Doesn’t all of that sound amazing! I want to sign up for all of the above. The verse tells us how. All we need to do is call on Him. Call on the Lord when we need him. When we are in trouble, we call out to the Lord and He will be there to rescue us. It doesn’t say that if we sit and wallow in our misery He will be there to rescue us. It doesn’t say if we just complain about our situation He will be there to rescue us. He is requiring us to take the first step, and He will do the rest. That is not a bad deal if you ask me.
The very last thing in the verse says, “With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.” Our Lord is so amazing. He makes so many promises to us. He says that He satisfy us with long life. I have three children and I want to be there to see them do all the things that they want to do when they grow up. I am hoping that I am blessed with a long life so that I can see all of it. I also am hoping for the Lord’s salvation. I know that I am not perfect and I know that is ok. God doesn’t need us to be perfect to earn His salvation. Jesus already did that when He dies on the cross for us. However, God does need us to love Him and to love our neighbors. Are we doing that? Are we loving our neighbors? He also wants us to call on Him. If we are in trouble, call of the Lord. If we have gone against His commandments, turn back and repent. Our Heavenly Father is a merciful Father. He keeps forgiving us time and time again, all He asks in return is that we repent and be truly sorry for having offended Him. Is this something we can do? Doesn’t it seem like a small price to pay for all that He has promised us?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to love you and to know you. Help us to call on you in our time of need. Help us to learn how to show you that we love you and that we know you. Help us to keep your commandments and help us to not be one of those that you turn away at the gates saying you don’t know our name. Lord, put on our hearts anything that we are doing that is against your commandments and give us the strength and the grace to stop doing that thing. We want to please you Lord, we want to call on you, love you, and know you. Give us the grace to do so. Help us remember in our times of need that all we need to do is call on you and you will not only rescue us from that difficult time, but you will also be right there with us. Lord help us to remember, when we forget. We love you and we know how amazing you are. We are so grateful to have you and we hope you know that. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!