Thoughts
I watched a small interview with Christian musician Michael W.
Smith and something he mentioned I needed. He was asked what his go to
verse is and he mentioned he tries to rely on the promises of God. He
also mentioned two verses. Psalm 139:17-18. “How precious are your
thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even
count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you
are still with me!”
I get stressed out very easily and my wife can tell you I often think
I’m failing both of us. I needed the reminder that God is still with me.
Years ago, when I was attending Real Life Corpus I remember Pastor Micah
doing a series called Life Verses and it was about verses in scripture you base
your life around. If you’ve ever gotten an email from me, you’ve seen
mine but I’m going to share those.
Psalm 18:19 “He led me to a place of safety; He rescued me because he
delights in me.”
Going to let you in on some minor Zac facts about this. I have
trouble believing a human could care about me yet my wife and my family do.
But here’s a verse where King David said God delights in him. This
is a man who spent most of his life being hunted by King Saul, the Philistines,
his own son and many others yet he says God delights in him. That means
something. He felt safer knowing that. Years back I discovered a
very little-known Christian music group called Clear that did a song called
Wide Open Spaces about this Psalm. There will be a link to the song in
the written portion of this.
My other life verse is Romans 5:8.
“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us
while we were still sinners.”
Absolutely nothing we can do to earn salvation it’s all by God’s
grace alone.
Today I need to know that God has thoughts about me, he delights in
me and loves me. Some of us are having bad days and need the reminder.
I had this whole blog written out and I was going to share it last week,
but my wife got sick and then her cat got sick. I spent my time off work
praying a lot. One verse I kept coming back to was this. James 5:16
“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be
healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and
produces wonderful results.” I keep praying that last part back to God
and I barely think my life even qualifies as being a righteous person because I
fail in so many ways but all I want is for my wife to be healed. When we
were in premarital counseling, I told our pastor that I pray often for Becky
when she’s sick and he told me not to stop especially when she is well just
keep praying for her. I want my marriage to succeed, and I want us to be
the people God wants us to be. I love my wife dearly. Sometimes you
have hard days and weeks and you need to stop and remember that God thinks
about you and cares for you. Because life is hard. I don’t know what
you’re going through but the pop singer Jewel put it best. “We are loved
beyond our ability to comprehend.” Lately I come home from work so
stressed out by bills and life and then I must deal with cleaning up and
feeding 3 cats and a full grown dog and trying to potty train a puppy I keep
saying “all I want is peace.” I’ve had a rough few days and I need the
reminder that God loves me and maybe you do too. There’s way more I could
say but I want to end this simply with something we all need to remember.
Lamentations 3:22-23 “The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His
mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh
each morning.”
Steadfast love of the Lord by Kathy Troccoli
The Overflow by Shine Like Stars
