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Marty's Thursday Devo 6-11-2020

Marty’s Devotion Week 12:

Psalm 71: 1-6

1 In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame!

2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me, and save me!

3 Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come;

you have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.

 4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.

5 For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.

6 Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother's womb.

My praise is continually of you.

 

Jonathan Edwards made 70 resolutions as a young man from scripture. Promises, if you will, to God of his resolve to follow and love God with all his heart.

  1. Resolved: I will DO whatever I think will be most to God’s glory; and my own good, profit and pleasure, for as long as I live. I will do all these things without any consideration of the time they take.
  2. Resolved: to do whatever I understand to be my duty and will provide the most good and benefit to mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I encounter, and no matter how many I experience or how severe they may be.
  3. Resolved: I will continually endeavor to find new ways to practice and promote the things from Resolution.
  4. Resolved: If ever – really, whenever – I fail & fall and/or grow weary & dull; whenever I begin to neglect the keeping of any part of these Resolutions; I will repent of everything I can remember that I have violated or neglected, …as soon as I come to my senses again.
  5. Resolved: Never to do anything, whether physically or spiritually, except what glorifies God. In fact, I resolve not only to this commitment, but I resolve not to even grieve and gripe about these things, …if I can avoid it.
  6. Resolved: Never lose one moment of time; but seize the time to use it in the most profitable way I possibly can.
  7. Resolved: To live with all my might, …while I do live.
  8. Resolved: Never to do anything which I would be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.
  9. Resolved: To act, in all respects, both in speaking and doing, as if nobody had ever been as sinful as I am; and when I encounter sin in others, I will feel (at least in my own mind& heart) as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same weaknesses or failings as others. I will use the knowledge of their failings to promote nothing but humility – even shame – in myself. I will use awareness of their sinfulness and weakness only as an occasion to confess my own sins and misery to God.
  10. Resolved: To think much, on all occasions, about my own dying, and of the common things which are involved with and surround death.
  11. Resolved: When I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom – both of Jesus and of Believers around the world; and remind myself of the reality of hell.

 

Clyde Kilby made 10 resolutions to do each day, based on nature but focused on God, for good mental health. 

  1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.
  2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: “There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.”
  3. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.
  4. I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.
  5. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.
  6. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.
  7. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the “child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder.”
  8. I shall follow Darwin’s advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.
  9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, “fulfill the moment as the moment.” I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.
  10. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.

 

Both men, Jonathan Edwards and Clyde Kilby, are giants of faith and were used by God to influence their generation and generations to follow.  You can find all 70 resolutions of Jonathan Edwards online and it would be worth the read.  But what have you and I resolved to do?  Have you or I taken time to really look at our lives and the time we have remaining to make eternal changes?  Are we struggling so much with the urgent things in our scheduled lives that we are truly missing out on those eternal appointments that are life altering and generation changing?  Maybe you and I need to make a few resolutions that we will do each day what will ensure a more effective end of our days.  Take a moment before we gather on Sunday to look at your resolutions and see what God can do.

 

 

I found a short story on our opening song, "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High" from Wikipedia.

It is a worship song, written by Rick Founds in 1989.

 Founds wrote the song during his morning devotion, while reading the scriptures on his computer monitor and watching television. He plucked his guitar thinking about the "cycle of redemption", comparing it with the water cycle.

 You came from heaven to earth, to show the way

From the earth to the cross, my debt to pay

From the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky

Lord I lift your name on high

 Founds performed the song as a worship leader in his church. It was picked up by Maranatha! Music and initially recorded by the Maranatha! Singers followed by the Praise Band. Promise Keepers performed the song in English and Spanish in their drives.

 Since the 1990s, it has been one of the most popular Christian songs. In the United States, Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) reported Lord I Lift Your Name on High as the most popular song used in churches every year from 1997 to 2003. Currently it is No. 24 on the list.[1] CCLI UK report it as the fifth most popular printed, projected or recorded song in mid-2006.[2] In Australia this song was the seventh most used song by the beginning of 2007

 

God of Wonders

Rick Husband was the commander of the Space Shuttle Columbia that wrecked upon entry in 2003 killing all 7 passengers on board. Two days before the incident, NASA mission control woke the Columbia crew by playing the song, God of Wonders.  Rick Husband commented that we truly see evidence here of a God of Wonders. 

 Following is the story behind the song, that meant so much to Rick Husband.

The writing of it, in 1999, was a joint effort by Marc Byrd and Steve Hindalong.

Hindalong was from California and Byrd was from Eldorado, Arkansas.

During an interview Marc said to me, “I grabbed my Bible on a Friday in 1999, and spent the entire weekend reading the Psalms and singing to God with a childlike heart. The beginning of ‘God of Wonders’ came out of the Psalms during that weekend. I had the music and a few phrases, one of which was ‘You are holy.’”

Hindalong said, in another interview, “Marc brought me the music for ‘God of Wonders,’ and as I strummed the chord progressions the hair stood up on my arms. I told Marc, ’This song sounds as if it should be... ‘God of wonders, beyond all galaxies.’”

Steve continued, “It took us several days, working together, to finish the song. I mostly wrote the lyrics and Marc the music.”

 

Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah

 

Indelibly associated with Welsh Male Voice Choirs and Eisteddfods, this hymn was originally written in Welsh by a Methodist preacher William Williams (1719-91). A pioneering hymnist who (in the words of S W Duffield) 'did for Wales what Wesley and Watts did for England.'

 In 1771 it was translated into English by Peter Williams, no relation, and Williams himself. The verse was tinkered with several times in the course of the 19th century, and the hymn is still often sung as 'Guide me, o thou great Redeemer'. It can be heard sung in Welsh in John Ford's Oscar-winning movie of 1941, How Green was my Valley.

 Williams' words have been much admired for their plain yet majestic dignity. 'The grandest re-enactment in modern hymnody of the Israelite journey through the barren wilderness to the Promised Land, which is the type of all spiritual pilgrimage', assert Marjorie Reeves and Jenyth Worsley; while J R Watson judges it 'one of the greatest of evangelical hymns, mainly because of its understatement.'

 The tune, 'Cwm Rhondda', sung in the trenches and mines, as well as at numberless rugby matches, was composed in 1905 by John Hughes for a singing festival – legend has it that he wrote it in chalk on a tarpaulin (though why he should have done so has never been explained). The repeated high notes of the verse's last line are a gift to Welsh tenors keen to show off their larynxes and can be drawn out to awesomely vulgar musical effect.

 The hymn was sung at the Princess of Wales's funeral in 1997.

 Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,

Pilgrim through this barren land;

I am weak, but thou art mighty;

Hold me with thy powerful hand;

Bread of heaven, bread of heaven,

Feed me till I want no more.

 

Open now the crystal fountain,

Whence the healing stream doth flow;

Let the fire and cloudy pillar

Lead me all my journey through;

Strong Deliv'rer, strong Deliv'rer,

Be thou still my strength and shield

 

When I tread the verge of Jordan

Bid my anxious fears subside;

Death of death, and hell's destruction,

Land me safe on Canaan's side;

Songs of praises, songs of praises,

I will ever give to thee.

 

Musing on my habitation,

Musing on my heaven'ly home,

Fills my soul with holy longings:

Come, my Jesus, quickly come;

Vanity is all I see;

Lord, I long to be with Thee!

 

 I Need Thee Every Hour

 I need thee every hour, most gracious Lord;

no tender voice like thine, can peace afford.

I need thee, O I need thee; every hour I need thee;

O bless me now, my Savior, I come to thee.

 

This hymn, by Annie Sherwood Hawks (1835-1918), reflects the same general characteristics as those of the other four 19th-century women hymn writers discussed during Lent.

 The women all employ first-person accounts that grow out of a deep personal piety, resulting in a language of intimacy between the singer and the Savior.

 A New York native, Hawks displayed a gift for verse at the early age of 14, contributing poems on a regular basis to a variety of newspapers. Though she composed over 400 hymn texts, "I Need Thee Every Hour" is the only hymn of hers that is still sung today.

Following her marriage to Charles Hawks in 1859, much of Hawks' life centered on the domestic aspects of rearing three children. She was a member of Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Dr. Robert Lowry, a prominent writer of gospel songs, was her pastor. Lowry encouraged the gift that he saw in Hawks' poetry.

 We have a personal account of the genesis of "I Need Thee Every Hour": Hawks writes, "One day as a young wife and mother of 37 years of age, I was busy with my regular household tasks during a bright June morning [in 1872]. Suddenly, I became so filled with the sense of nearness to the Master that, wondering how one could live without Him, either in joy or pain, these words were ushered into my mind, the thought at once taking full possession of me -- 'I Need Thee Every Hour. . . .'"

 Lowry added a refrain as he wrote the music for the hymn.

 Ira Sankey, the great revival musician for Dwight Moody, used this hymn at the National Baptist Sunday School Association Convention the same year, 1872. It then appeared in Royal Diadem for the Sunday School, an 1873 collection compiled by Lowry and William Doane.

The phrase "I need thee" is at the center of the intimacy expressed in this hymn. Its persistent repetition is a common device used by hymn writers of the era. With the refrain added by Lowry, Hawks' hymn pleads "I need thee" 20 times when all five stanzas are sung!

 This close relationship with Christ stands in stark contrast to more objective hymns based, for example, on God's mighty acts and the theology of the Trinity. Perhaps the Christian life exists somewhere between these two poles of praising the all-powerful God and craving the intimacy of a personal relationship with Jesus.

 

See you Sunday,

Marty