Psalm 34:4-7 “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.” (NRSV) This episode talks about how if we seek the Lord he will answer your prayers. He will deliver you and save you. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Seek The Lord
Psalm 34:4-7 “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.” (NRSV)
Did you catch those first four words? I sought the Lord. Sought is an action word. It does not say that I did nothing and the Lord answered my prayers. It says I sought the Lord and he answered my prayers. We have to take the step to seek the Lord and he will answer the prayers that we are asking for. What can you do to seek the Lord? You can spend time with Him. You can talk to Him and pray to Him. You can read His Word. There are lots of ways you can seek the Lord. Which one will you choose?
The next line is something that I bet we are all praying for. He delivered me from all my fears. How great would it be to be delivered from all your fears. What are your fears? Why do you have those fears? Have you sought the Lord when it comes to delivery from those fears? The Lord is willing to help us when we ask for it. Have you asked for His help? Why not? What have you got to lose? Why is it that we would rather sit with our fear than turn to the Lord and ask Him for help with it?
Is it that we feel we don’t need help? We can handle it on our own? Is it that we think it is too small of a problem for the Lord our God to handle? Is it that we feel embarrassed that we fear anything at all? Do we think if we don’t ask the Lord for help then He won’t know we are afraid? Whatever the reason is, the Lord is just waiting for us to invite Him into our fears and ask for His help. He can deliver us from our fears if we turn to Him and invite Him to take care of them for us. If we are going to fight to keep our fears, by not talking about them and not getting help for them, then we will get to keep them. Is this what we want? Do we want to keep our fears, or do we want to release them and get on living our best life?
The next part of the verse says, “Those who look to him are radiant.” Have you ever seen someone that looked radiant. I don’t mean literally shining like diamonds, like Edward in the Twilight Series. I mean someone that just glowed. A lot of people say that when someone is pregnant the are glowing. They also say this about the newlyweds or people that just fell in love. What is this glow? It is their joy shining through. They are so happy they can’t contain it all and it is shines through. You will also notice this with people who are filled with the Holy Spirit. Their pure joy can not be contained.
“Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed.” The second part of this is saying that if you keep your eyes on the Lord you won’t do anything that will cause you shame. If you turn away from the Lord, you may turn to other things. Things that may cause you to do things that are shameful. Can you think of a time when you did something that you were not proud of? When you did it, were your eyes fixed on the Lord or on something else? We can be easily led astray when we take our eye of Jesus. He can be our protection and our shelter if we let Him. If we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus we will walk in His ways and our face will never be covered in shame.
Then the verse goes back to the idea of us seeking him. It says, “This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble.” First the soul called out, and then the Lord heard Him and saved him out of all his troubles. We must take that first step. Once we do, God can take over and it will be a glorious day when we let Him do that. We like to think we can fix things on our own. So, God lets us. I wonder if He rolls his eyes or shakes His head as He watches us make the same mistakes over and over again? I wonder what He thinks every time we go back to trying to do it all ourselves. When we will learn? Why can’t we just turn to Him the moment we encounter trouble? Why is it so hard?
The last part of this verse says, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.” What I like most about this last part is that it talks about the angel of the Lord encamping around those who fear him. I don’t know about you, but having an angel encamp around me sound pretty great. Did you know that you have a guardian angel? We all do. Our angel is there to protect us and guide us. We can talk to our angel and we can ask our angel for help or for guidance. Father Padre Pio had a very close relationship with his guardian angel. He used to tell his spirtual children, if you are in trouble and you can not get to me, send your guardian angel to me. He would tell them this for confession as well. I watched a video about Father Padre Pio and his ability to hear other people’s guardian angels when they were sent to him. It was remarkable. I am going to put a link for it in the show notes as I was blown away listening to it. It is not a long video. I recommend checking it out. (Click Here for Video)
We have so much to learn from the Saints. They are truly remarkable people. Listening to Father Padre Pio talk about his guardian angel it makes me realize that I am neglecting mine. If they are there to protect and guide me, why and I not calling upon my angel more? It is not as if I don’t need the guidance. I have started to call upon my guardian angel more. I ask my angel to go before me into any tough situation and soften the hearts of those I am meeting with. I ask that my angel talk to their angel and ask that their ears and hearts be opened to listen. I have passed this suggestion on to others, I think this was another thing that Padre Pio suggested, but I can’t be sure it was him. I have friends that have reported meetings that they expected to go badly, or conversations that they dreaded having, actually went well when they asked their angel to prepare the way. What do you think? Are you going to start calling on your angel? Or maybe you are still skeptical. That’s fair, I only started learning about the angels and their power in the last couple of years. May I suggest though, if you are not sure about angels, you do some research? If you do your research and don’t find any compelling evidence that guardian angels exist, then you haven’t lost anything but some time. However, if you do research and you see how powerful your angel is and that you could have that angel using that power to protect and guide you, wouldn’t you want to know that? I guarantee if you start to learn more about the angels you won’t be sorry. They are truly amazing!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are seeking you, please help us. Lord please deliver us from our fears and our troubles. Help us to keep our eyes fixed on you so that we do not do anything that could cause us shame. Lord thank you for giving us each a guardian angel to protect us and guide us. Teach us how to rely on that angel Lord. We are so very thankful that you are so amazing. We love you Lord 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. “When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.” That is a quote by Katherine Ponder. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!