Trusting God’s Promises - Psalm 63:7 Pt.13 Series

Review

If you want to love God more, begin with resolve – resolve to prefer Him above everything else. Then work on your appetite – convert all the thirst of your soul to thirst for God. Then do all you can to satisfy those desires. Seek God. Follow hard after Him so you can feast upon Him. And when you find Him, behold Him. Seeing God transforms the soul. And last week we looked at a fifth principle: Remember.

Sanctify your memory by…

1. Making much of your experiences of God’s love

2. Taking advantage of night time

3. Filling your life with review and reminders

When times are good, celebrate that with however much celebration it takes to imprint the experience of God’s love in your long-term memory. And when times are hard, and when you feel bad – remember that you haven’t always felt bad. There have been times when you have felt great, and have been full of energy and hope and joy. Those times were times when God smiled on you and was trying to show you love. Reach back into your memory and retrieve the memories of wonderful times with the Lord.

Psalm 143:4-6 So my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is dismayed. 5 I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done. 6 I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah

Remembering will make your soul thirst for God in times of sorrow. If you remember the wonderful times, you will thirst for them. But if you stored those wonderful times in your mind as times of sweet fellowship with and enjoyment of God, ten you will thirst for God.

Introduction

Praise is Joy

The final three lessons I would like to devote to the subject that is the most dominant theme in this psalm – joyful praise. David speaks more about that in Ps.63 that about any other subject. Even though he is miserable, he is in the desert, he is dry, thirsty, weary - still the consuming topic on his mind more than anything else is joyful praise.

3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.

4 Therefore I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.

5b …with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

7b … I sing in the shadow of your wings.

11 the king will rejoice in God; all who swear by God's name will praise him

It is all about joyful praise. Actually, the phrase “joyful praise” is redundant. All true praise is joyful because praise is nothing more than the expression of joy in God. Praise is what happens in your mouth when you are happy. Scripture associates the the singing of praises with feelings of gladness.

Jas.5:13 Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise.

When you are thrilled or moved or amazed or enthralled with something – the things that come out of your mouth are called “praise.” When you are walking out of a theater after seeing the best movie you have ever seen, or standing there in awe at the rim of the Grand Canyon or at Niagara Falls, or getting up after a fantastic meal - after any experience that has caused joy in your heart, the things that come out of your mouth at that moment are called “praise.”

Praise is simply the expression of joy in the heart. That is why I say the phrase “joyful praise” is a redundancy. It is kind of like saying “happy laughter.” You don’t have to say “happy” to describe it because all laughter is happy.

But I say “joyful praise” anyway because we tend not to be as aware of the definition of praise as we are of laughter. Our legalistic hearts tend to reduce praise to a mere duty that can be done regardless of how we feel. So I will use the term “joyful” to remind us of what praise really is.

When David says he is going to praise all the time; that means he is going to be joyful all the time. So these last three weeks of this study are about how to be happy in the Lord all the time- even in the midst of pain and sorrow (and that is not a contradiction).

The Basis for Joyful Praise – God’s Promises

This lesson will focus particularly on the basis for joyful praise. If you are going to be happy in the Lord all the time – so happy that praise comes out of your mouth, something is going to have to generate all that joy. And that something is delight in God’s great and precious promises. If you look carefully at v.7 you will get a peek at what was behind David’s joy in the Lord.