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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Using Your Imagination the Right Way, continued
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar. (Psalms 42:5,6 NIV)
Can you remember times of joy among the people of the Lord? Call these good times to remembrance. They will carry you through the most difficult of circumstances. Call it imagination, or faith, or hope, it is all the same. It is your conviction that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him diligently.
We are saved in the present by our remembrance of God's faithfulness in the past, the times of joy we have experienced.
Now the writer is rejoicing in the Lord.
By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life. (Psalms 42:8 NIV)
Again he is downcast.
I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?" (Psalms 42:9 NIV)
Have you ever felt this way? Maybe right now you are going about mourning, oppressed by the enemy.
What are you to do? You are to talk to your soul and tell it to hope in God. Call to mind the goodness of the Lord and refuse to let your soul get you down.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalms 42:11 NIV)
Asaph joins those with whom God deals endlessly.
But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. (Psalms 73:2 NIV)
But then he remembers God's word to the righteous.
When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. (Psalms 73:21-24 NIV)
Jude had something to say to the Christians of his day.
I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. (Jude 1:5)
Let's think for a moment about the journey of Israel from Egypt to Canaan.
When the Jews left Egypt God had informed them He was bringing them to a land flowing with milk and honey. The idea of a land flowing with milk and honey gave them good material for their imagination to work on.
The Presence of God during the pilgrimage of the Israelites was remarkable. They had seen the Red Sea open up, the cloud by day and the fire by night, the Presence of God on Sinai, the Glory of God resting on Moses. They had drunk water coming from a rock. They had heard the trumpet blast issuing from the smoke that covered Mount Sinai. Some of the elders actually had gone up into the mountain and eaten at the table of God. Then there was the daily manna, the fire coming down from Heaven and consuming the sacrifice on the Altar of Burnt Offering, and miraculous healings. In addition the Jews had witnessed the sudden afflicting of Miriam with leprosy and the ground opening up and swallowing Korah, a number of the leaders of Israel, and all their family members.
To be continued.