Psalm 16:7-8 “I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” Today's episode talks about how important it is to slow down and listen to the Lord's counsel. It is important to keep our eyes fixed upon the Lord if we don't want to be shaken. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
I Keep My Eyes Always On The Lord
Psalm 16:7-8 “I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”
When I read this my first thought was, I wish my eyes were always on the Lord. I wonder if sometimes, in the Psalms and actually in any part of the Bible, if they are saying what they know they should do instead of what they are actually doing. The person writing this Psalm, were their eyes always on the Lord, or were they saying this as a reminder to themselves of what works best? The beginning of this verse says I will praise the Lord and you guys know that is one of my favorite things to do. Praising the Lord is something I tend not to forget to do too often. Luckily I am in a prayer group that knows how important praise is, so even if I didn’t do it regularly on my own, we praise God every Thursday for an hour. That is one of the great things about surrounding yourself with other people who love God, they help you remember what is truly important.
“I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.” This is a great verse because it reminds us who is leading us through this crazy thing we call life. The Lord is there to counsel us. Are we seeking His guidance? Are we stopping to ask Him what He thinks of all the plans we are making in our head? When is the last time you slowed yourself down long enough to run something by God before you did it? Has it been awhile? Have you been running into a lot of dead ends lately? Have you noticed that things aren’t bad, but they aren’t great either? Maybe that’s because you are going so fast you haven’t had time to listen to God counsel you. He really does have some pretty great advise if we slow down and listen to it.
Things just go more smoothly with the counsel of the almighty one. I mean, you can tell just from His name, that He knows what He is talking about. He has seen your entire life, He know what turns you will make and He knows how to help you get to the life you want faster than you could ever could on your own. So, why don’t we listen to His counsel then? We don’t listen because we are too busy. One luxury that Covid afforded us, was the gift of slowing down. There was so much bad that came from Covid, and I am not disputing that. However, Covid also afforded us the opportunity to clear our calendars. To just stay home and be with our family for a little while. The amount of time we were all home with family is different for everyone, but we all got some time where are schedules were completely cleared. No one was going to work, no one was going to school, grocery stores and other stores weren’t open for a bit. The whole world slowed almost to a stop.
This was not good for so many reasons and also the fact that it allowed many people to stop and consciously choose what to add back into their schedule was a benefit. Some people found out they liked the less busy schedule. Some people decided they liked spending more time with their kids. Some families were so busy they went from one activity to the next without any time to even eat a meal together. However, with the forced time to slow down, they were able to spend that time together. People we able to spend more quiet time with God because they no longer had a long commute to work each day. There was brief period in time when life slowed down and we all had the chance to check in with God and ask for His counsel. I am sure not everyone used this time to check in with God, but they had the chance.
When I read the second half of that first line, “even at night my heart instructs me,” I thought of how it was dark at night. I am not sure if this verse is talking about at night meaning, even when I am asleep my heart instructs me, or even through the dark parts of my life my heart instructs me. However, I think regardless of what the Psalm is saying, both of these are true. God doesn’t guide us sometimes, and then other times leave us on our own to fend for ourselves. He is always there guiding us. He is always there in that “still small voice” down deep inside of us. However, we can’t always hear him because we aren’t always listening. If you are going through a difficult time right now and you feel like you could really use some direction, take some time and sit with the Lord. Ask Him for direction and then wait and listen until you get some direction. We tend to ask God questions a lot but we don’t really ask expecting to get a reply. God wants to talk with you, He wants to guide you. If you ask Him a question sit expectantly and He will answer you.
The last line in this verse is awesome, if we can just remember it. It says, “I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” There is so much anxiety in the world and I think there wouldn’t be if we could remember this verse. If we were to keep our eyes on the Lord, instead of on the news, our friends facebook page, the celebrity tabloids, the politics and all the other things we keep our attention on, we would not be so anxious. It says with the Lord at our right hand, we will not be shaken! The Lord is our shield and our refuge. We do not need to be afraid and yet we often lose sight of this fact. We take our eyes off the Lord and we forget He is there for us, we forget He promises to always be there for us.
This is why when I read this verse I instantly thought, “I wish I kept my eyes always on the Lord.” It is so easy to take our eyes off the Lord. It is so easy to get wrapped up in what were are doing and forget to stop and ask the Lord what He thinks about it. It is easy to turn to the news, our friends and other things in the world for answers. We expect answers from these things, but for some reason we don’t expect answers from God. Maybe we think He is too busy to talk to us. Maybe we think we aren’t good enough for God to talk to us. Whatever the reason is, we take our eyes off the Lord because we don’t expect Him to talk to us. If you notice you are getting anxious, or feeling like the things around you are making you feel scared, it is time to turn your eyes back to the Lord. It is time to let Him guide your steps. It is time to ask the Lord what you should do and then wait with an expectant faith that He will give you an answer.
I know that if we all started sitting and waiting with an expectant faith for the Lord to talk with us, then He would talk with us. I do this when I write in my prayer journal. I write a letter to God and then I ask God to speak to me through my pen and I write a letter back to myself. I write whatever comes into my mind because I am expecting it to be God talking to me. God tells us right in the Bible, ask and you shall receive. If we ask God to talk with us, He will. The problem is not that God is not talking to us, the problem is that we are not listening to Him when He talks to us. We are too busy to listen. Think about your week this week. When could you fit in some time to listen to the Lord? Actually schedule it into your day or your week. I am sure if you started doing this, scheduling in time to just sit and listen to the Lord, you will be amazed at what you hear Him say. Give it a try this week and let me know how it goes.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask for you to help us listen to you. I ask that you show us where in our schedules we can take the time to sit with you. Put it upon our hearts Lord so that we take this ever important time with you. Lord, we want to keep our eyes on you. We don’t want to be shaken by the things we encounter. We want to know and trust that you have everything under control. Lord we trust in you! You are amazing and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We are amazed that you would talk to each of us individually and we thank you Lord. We love you and 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 have some very exciting news today. My book is finally out there in the world. For those of you that don’t know, I wrote a book called “Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace.” It is about 15 different ways I was able to grow my faith in the Lord to a point where I trust Him even in the most difficult circumstances. If you are looking to trust God more I would love to invite you to check out my book. It is available on Amazon in print format and eBook format. I will be doing the audio book in the next week or two. I thank you all so much for your support in this process. I look forward to meeting you back here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!