Daily Devotionals
Daily Devotional: Psalms 38:1-8
Ps 38:1-8
O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. 2 For your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me. 3 Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin. 4 My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. 5 My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. 6 I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning. 7 My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. 8 I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.
Eph. 2:3-5
3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-it is by grace you have been saved.
Nothing destroys our peace and rest more than sin. The conscience that God has given us can keep us from sleep and drive away our hunger. It brings the deepest and darkest depression our souls can experience. The world offers nothing to take away our sin and the guilt that tears us apart. The many religions of the world have no solution, other than try to do enough good to offset our sin.
It is in Jesus that we find relief. We were lost in sin, but God intervened by giving his Son to die on the cross in our place and for our sin. We don’t deserve to be forgiven. We don’t earn forgiveness. We can never do enough good, even if we were not to ever sin again, to offset the sins we have committed against God. We deserve to die spiritually – to be eternally separated from our God.
David is held up to us as a hero of faith. He was called a man after God’s own heart. But David was not always perfect, he sinned, just like you and I sin, but his heart was set on serving God and doing his will. When he did sin, he always turned to God to find relief in forgiveness. He knew he served a merciful God who would forgive all his sin when he repented. We serve the same God of grace.
O Lord God, eternal and glorious beyond my ability to understand, I praise you and give you all honor and respect. Give me a pure heart and a determined spirit to know your will and to live it in my life every day. I know that nothing brings you honor more than obedience, so I need your strength to be all you want me to be in all I do and say. Give me wisdom to understand your word better and wisdom to know when to speak, what to say, how to say it and to know when to keep my mouth shut and just bite my tongue. I pray in the name of Jesus my Savior.
Robert
