Faithfulness and the Morning

One of my favorite songs on my current playlist is Beautiful by Phil Wickham. In the song he sings:

I see your face in every sunrise
The colors of the morning are inside your eyes

There's something special about a sunrise. Every morning as the sun rises, you can watch the light chase the darkness across the sky - it's new, it's refreshing, it comes without fail. So, it's true, God's eyes are filled with grace, faithfulness, and unfailing love. I remember one year when I was in Costa Rica in a hotel room dubbed "the unicorn palace" - no air conditioning, hundreds of mosquitoes. On the other hand, this room was also roughly 200 feet from the Caribbean Ocean. Every morning when I woke up, I got to watch the sun rise over the water - a simply breathtaking way to start the day. The morning is such a beautiful picture of God's grace and mercy - "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; They are new every morning" [Lamentations 2:22-23 (ESV)]. Without fail, God will forgive (just as the sun is faithful to rise). This week, we feature a verse that says "joy comes with the morning." Have you found joy in forgiveness? Is God's mercy something that you are excited/joyful about? Or did you forget just how beautiful it is?



Verses 1-3 I like to call sections in the Bible like this, the "you have's" ... All David does here is say, "God you have [fill in the blank with something wonderful]." Think about it though, what does this speak of? What does this tell us about our God? He is faithful. Unlike pretty much everything else, he pulls through for us ... all the time. The last 29 chapters of Psalms are riddled with David's praise, but also his petitions and requests to God - here, in chapter 30, they are answered. Maybe you don't feel the same way ... maybe you feel like you and God just don't have a "you have [fill in the blank]" type of relationship. I pose this question: Have you asked? Have you made your request known to God? Have you given him 29 chapters of your life so that he can faithfully answer in the 30th? James 4:2 says, "you do not have, because you do not ask." You can't expect an answer if you don't ask. You can't expect provision if you do not ask (granted, God surprises us from time to time, right?). In Psalm 3 (27 weeks ago), we talked about a word "selah." We can almost replace that word in the Bible with "stop and think." I encourage you to stop and think. To meditate on God's word daily (even if it's just for a little bit). I would ask you to consider a time of prayer where you give God you day and make you requests know to Him. In Jesus' model prayer, He even says to ask: "give us this day our daily bread." Make your desires known to God and He will faithfully answer - more faithfully than the morning sunrise.

Verses 4-5 I like how verse 5 reads. I really like it. Think about before you dedicated your life to Christ - before you "purposed in your heart" as the book of Daniel would say, God seemed convicting - God seemed angry. I think that people who struggle to accept God are intimidated by the fact that their standing on the opposite side of the battle field facing God. God hates sin, and that's scary. On the other hand, He loves us. Think about the times you have fallen into a period of sin - you felt convicted, you felt like you were fighting against God ... detached, maybe even scared. David says here, God's anger is but for a moment ... why? It only takes a moment for person to step from sin and to walk into his mercy, grace, and forgiveness. It's easy not easy to step out of sin, but the reward is the Father's favor of a lifetime. Forgiveness - it brings joy like the morning - faithfully, on time, without fail. This whole section is a highlight. David is so enamored by God's faithfulness that he can only describe the feeling by pointing to creation - to the morning ... to the sunrise (see last week). What do we do about this? (v4) Sing praise, give thanks, and remember/never forget how good God is to us.

Verses 6-12 Just read this for yourself. It's kind of off our topic for this week , but there is still some very excellent stuff in here. Favorite: "You have turned for me my mourning into dancing" (v 11). If you think something is really cool, post on it in the comment section :)


It's so easy to overlook a sunrise ...
Don't make the same mistake with God's faithfulness.

-Chris