Setting the Alarm, Setting the LORD before you

Martin Lloyd-Jones’s “Enjoying the Presence of God,”  a collection of sermons based on nine Psalms, has provided memory milestones in my ongoing journey of living in the presence of God. Two of the chapters give light to our current study in the Psalms, Always in His Presence (Ps. 16) and Seeking the Face of God (Ps. 27). This week we will look at Psalm 16, with a focus on verse 8 – “I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.” This verse describes the active seeking of God’s presence and what that active seeking means.

Psalm 16 is a “Messianic” Psalm. Peter, Paul and the writer of Hebrews quote or reference verse 10 – “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.”

            “So David, here, was not only writing about himself; he was writing as a prophet about the ‘Coming one,’ the Son of God, the Messiah, and therefore, these words     can be appropriated to our Lord Himself…and the secret life of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, when he was here in this world and lived His life as a man.”(p. 128)

Read the last verse of Psalm 16 as a confession in a prayer – “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” This is a verse where Lloyd-Jones roots his title for this collection of sermons from the Psalms, “Enjoying the Presence of God.” “…in your presence there is fullness of joy,” becomes the context of our considerations of verse 8.

Lloyd-Jones writes,

             “Setting the Lord before me means that I train and school myself in what the        masters of the spiritual life have called ‘the art of recollection.’ It means that I          consciously, deliberately and actively speak to myself about myself and about my       relationship to God. It means when I wake up in the morning, before I allow       myself to think about anything else, I say to myself, ‘You are a child of God and     an heir of eternity; God knows you and you belong to him’—recollection! Now, I must do that, and do it forcibly, because the moment I wake up thoughts will come crowding into my mind, perhaps temptations, perhaps doubts; all sorts of things. But these I brush aside and deliberately remind myself of God and myself and my relationship to Him. And I meditate upon that and then I consciously seek the presence of God. To put it another way, I must practice the presence of God.” (pgs 132, 133)

Read Psalm 16 every day before Community Group on Wednesday. Reread Psalm 16:8 before you go to bed and then wake up and set the LORD before you to start the day. Come ready to share active ways to set God before you to “Practice the presence of God.”

As a bonus, look ahead to Psalm 27:4 “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.”

Devotional Presence, from the start of things to the final chapter

Pastor Don Aldin said in a recent sermon, “We are made for presence.” This week and next we will explore the idea/practice of being in the presence of God in our devotional life, using the language of the Psalms. How would you describe your devotional life as you experience the presence of God?

The language of the Psalms describing being in God’s presence is diverse and complex. There is “no-one-size-fits-all” description, magic formula or descriptive word to make it happen.  Presence shows up in joyful Psalms as we enter the courts with praise or in the lament in a pit. Presence is something the Psalmists long for, cry out for or at times, equate with life itself. In the day of the Psalmist as well as today, this idea/experience is both by faith and, to use a phrase from Francis A. Schaeffer, “moment by moment.” Why is it so hard to describe this experience? Let me explore this question first from the Biblical theological perspective and then from an historical overview. Next we will look a Psalm to help recover the language of the Psalm to shape, encourage and describe our devotional life that we will study in Wednesday’s community group.

In the creation account of Genesis 3 we read the story where the created order changed. “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden… therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.” We were created to walk with God. The man and his wife listened to the serpent and then acted on those words instead of the words of the LORD God. The man and his wife hid from the presence of the LORD God. The rest of the Biblical story in scripture is about the restoration of that lost everyday presence by a God who comes looking for those who hid among the trees of the garden. Fast forward to the last chapter in the Bible, Revelation 22, and this description “No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” Consider the following highlights of Biblical events that describe the presence of God: The smoking pot of Genesis 15, the burning bush of Exodus 3, the pillars of cloud and fire of Exodus 13 and the cloud at the temple dedication in 2 Chronicles 5. Ezekiel 10 tells the account of the glory of the LORD departing the temple. In the New Testament we have the Incarnation and Pentecost. The last words of Jesus in Matthew are, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Recovering the descriptive language and practice of the experience of being/living in God’s presence will encourage us in our devotional life, the focus of the community group study, and life together. Now we turn to some history of our topic.

Historically our lack of descriptive language for our devotional experiences has come I believe, from fear. First, the fear of not getting both the description and the experience itself right. Then the twin fears of extremes—uncontrolled ecstasy and dead routine rituals.

As modern people who care about what the Bible says, we want, rightfully, to get things right. It is our perception of what is right that I want explore by reflecting on the language of the Psalms.  In the Psalms we have descriptions of mountain top and valley experiences, the experiences of youth and old age, the weak and the strong, and of the rich, the poor, and the oppressed. As we read and prayerfully reflect on the Psalms we will experience a diversity of situations, authors and styles of language. Experiencing the presence of God is not a checklist activity, yet often there are common themes and descriptions. The saints of the past experienced both ecstasy and the wilderness. Sometimes our devotions will seem like routine rituals where we long for something more, even if we are not sure how to describe what more would be. Fear needs to be replaced by faith. Faith needs to be shaped and encouraged by the language of the Psalms in our devotional lives/experiences.

I wrote this last week for my Facebook page: “One of the goals of repentance is being/remaining in the presence of God. Psalm 38 is both a confession of sin and self-analysis of repentance in the language of a poet. “My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness,…O Lord, all my longing is before you; my sighing is not hidden from you…I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin…Do not forsake me, O Lord! O my God, be not far from me!” These verses come from one of the Psalms on being present with God both in life and devotions, and we will consider it next in Community Group. As always, read all of Psalm 38 for context and the complete text.” These verses can be the start of our prayers.

Community Group Backstory

Here is the backstory for the community group I will begin leading on Sept. 17, entitled – “Recovering the language of the Psalms to shape and enrich your devotional life.”

I grew up with family devotions and was introduced to personal devotions when I was 15. I wondered, “Why do I need more?”  In our teen years we are getting ready to leave home and the comfort that comes from safe routines that give a sense of security and identity. The summer before I left home I burned through the Bible in two months to prepare for a Bible exam at Covenant College. I passed. That exercise started me on the practice of reading through the Bible every year. Bible reading and prayer were transfer skills and practices I brought from 18 years of family devotions. I say 18 years because I sat in the highchair at the kitchen table and listened before I could talk. I am one of those Christians who grew up with, “Jesus loves me, this I know because the Bible tells me so” on account of family devotions—devotions that were then reinforced by Sunday school and Sunday worship, in that order.

Fast forward 40 years into my deployed military ministry in Iraq and Afghanistan. (More details from those 40 years will be considered in upcoming blogs for the community group.) In the hospital in Iraq (which I have read was overrun by ISIS) and in the mountains of Afghanistan, I ministered mostly to young airman, soldiers and Marines. Often what came out of those listening relationships was a desire to learn how to connect with God on their own because war bestows chaos on life’s schedules. We ate and slept when we could, where we could. Sometimes, I only saw them for a very few days each month. They needed to be able to survive spiritually, and maybe thrive, on their own. I encouraged them to have a spiritual wingman or battle buddy if they could find one.

In our community group, we will focus on personal devotions. I always encourage people to find a spiritual family, a small group whenever they can, and a local church. But so often finding group time in a 16+ hour day is for many as hard as it was in the deployment environment. Like I did with those people serving in war I would like to share a skillset to create your/our own portable spiritual MREs, that is, Meals Ready to Eat. Be assured—the community group study time will be about the Psalms and their language/words—not war stories. Each person’s story is unique and that will be valued in the community group.

In talking with people in the past few years, I hear they want to move beyond the routines of devotions—often Bible Reading and prayer—into something more real. The great undefined of “real” is, it seems, the sense that something is missing. There is a desire by many for there to be more in their devotional lives.  One of the missing needs in their devotional lives, I discovered, was for the language/words to describe what I refer to as the actions and experiences of a Christian devotional life. That is where the community group Working Group Objective came from: “The goal of this study and discussion of selected Psalms is to recover Biblical language to shape, enrich, and describe the actions and experiences of our Christian devotional life.”

This community group will be more of a first draft rather than a first edition of what I have learned from my own life and ministry. This group study of selected Psalms will not answer all the questions people have about a devotional life. The goal as stated “…is to recover Biblical language to shape, enrich, and describe the actions and experiences of our Christian devotional life.” What I want to share is not new. We will begin at the recovery of Biblical language in the Psalms, and that Biblical language will then, I hope, “shape, enrich and describe” our daily devotional lives.