Psalm 44:5-6 “Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down our assailants. For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.” Today's episode reminds us that we do not defeat our enemies through our own power or our own might. It is through Christ that we do all things. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
It Is Through Christ That We Defeat Our Enemies
Psalm 44:5-6 “Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down our assailants. For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.”
This is something we can tend to forget. We pray for God to help us out of our situations. We pray for God to save us from our foes. Then when we get away from them, we tend to forget it was God who saved us. This verse says, “Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down our assailants.” We do these things through God. Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It is through God that we can do the hard things. It is not by our own power or strength. It is not through our ability or our determination. We have none of that without the Lord. It’s like we know this, but then we it’s most important, we forget.
When we are facing really difficult times that is often when we forget that we can do all things through Christ. We forget if God is for us, who could be against us. We take our eyes off Jesus and we forget that He is the answer. He is our strength. It’s easy to take our eyes off Jesus. This world is so distracting. This world is so full of noise. Anytime we want to focus on Jesus, our phone rings, or a notification goes off telling us we have a text message, we have a facebook message, or some other thing that can distract us. If we want to keep our eyes focused on Jesus we need to be very intentional. In the mornings I wake up early just to spend time with God. And most morning, aside from writing these podcast episodes we don’t get to spend a lot of time together. I will sit down with my prayer journal and then my dog Aimee will let me know she is ready to go downstairs to eat and go outside. Then I make my lemon water and Tony’s coffee and sometimes empty the dishwasher. Then it is time to write the podcast episode if I haven’t already.
Do you see how distractions can take our focus off the Lord? What I started to do at the beginning of this year is I added saying the rosary to my morning routine and I do it when I am feeding the dog, doing the dishes, and making Tony’s coffee. I have an awesome app that says the rosary and a really great explanation of each mystery. I do not have my rosary beads in my hands but I do say the prayers with the app. It is not perfect as I am not always paying the best attention, but it is getting me in the habit of saying the rosary every day and I can slowly get better at meditating more on the mysteries, the more I say them. This was one intentional way for me to reclaim the prayer time that distractions took away from me.
Sometimes our distractions are phones and computers and things that we can figure out how to ignore during our prayer time. Sometimes are distractions are things we can’t ignore. I can’t really ignore my dog if she needs to go outside. I can’t really ignore the fact that I have to wake kids up for school or dive kids to work. However, I can use that time to spend with the Lord, even while I am doing other things. One thing the Lord has been really trying to get me to see, and I seem to be a very slow learner, is that prayer time doesn’t have to be perfect. There are many ways to spend time with God and they can still be considered prayer time.
We are much harder on ourselves than God is on us. We have a picture of him sitting up in heaven on his beautiful throne and we think He is looking down from heaven upon us and shaking His head because we aren’t spending enough time with Him. Or we think He is judging us because we didn’t say this prayer right, or we fell asleep during that prayer time. What God has been trying to show me over the last couple years is that is not at all what He is doing. God is up in heaven smiling down upon us. He loves us so incredibly. Anytime we fit any prayer in, He is smiling. He is not up there saying, “Why was that only 5 minutes, when you know you have time for 10.” He is up there saying, “Thank you my son or Thank you my daughter for spending your precious time with me.” This doesn’t mean He doesn’t want to spend more time with us, it doesn’t mean He doesn’t want us to keep trying to spend time alone with Him. However, it does mean He is not judging us for it. If He is not judging us, why are we judging ourselves? Be graceful with yourself. Setting up a prayer time can be difficult. Keep trying.
The last part of the verse says, “For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.” I know I already briefly touched on this but I wanted to stress the importance of these words. We tend to want to save ourselves. We ask God for help but then rely on our own strength, our own power. We make all the calls, we do all the things, we proceed with whatever we think the next right step is and go full steam ahead. Taking the next right step is not a bad thing. It is something I often suggest when people don’t know what to do. However, we sometimes skip a very important step before we take that next right step. We often forget to stop and ask God what he wants us to do. We ask Him for help and then don’t stop to listen to how he wants to help. What if we changed this? What if we stopped and took a moment to ask God how He wants to save us from our current situation? What if we stopped and asked God where to go from here?
I can just imagine all the plans God has made for us to get us out of a situation and then we mess them up because we decide to act without consulting Him first. I just refer back to this verse. “For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.” We can’t do it on our own. We can’t defend ourselves on our own. We can protect our loved ones on our own. And the amazing thing is, we don’t have to! God is there for us. He is our protector and our shield. He is our refuge. We can do all things through HIm who strengthens us. We just need to ask, and then wait to listen to HIs reply. Waiting is the hard part, but I know you can do it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask for you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we love you and we want to walk with you. We want to rely on you, we just need your help. We are sorry we ask for your help and then we don’t listen for how you want to help. Please help us to trust you more and to listen more. Help us to rely on you and not forget that it is through you that we are able to defeat our enemies. Help us remember that through you we can do all things. 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 meeting your here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!