Episode Transcript
Welcome Bonnie McClure to the Wake-Up Call for these next two weeks with a Wake-Up Call mini-series on Psalm 103. Bonnie is from Bremen, Georgia. She is married to Matthew, and mother of two sons ten and eight, and a dog named Kudzu and a cat named Rose. She’s a high school bookkeeper by day and a writer by calling. She writes regularly at the Pointed Arrow.
PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Abba, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Abba, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Psalm 103 (NLT)
Let all that I am praise the LORD;
with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name.
Let all that I am praise the LORD;
may I never forget the good things he does for me.
He forgives all my sins
and heals all my diseases.
He redeems me from death
and crowns me with love and tender mercies.
He fills my life with good things.
My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!
The LORD gives righteousness
and justice to all who are treated unfairly.
He revealed his character to Moses
and his deeds to the people of Israel.
The LORD is compassionate and merciful,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
He will not constantly accuse us,
nor remain angry forever.
He does not punish us for all our sins;
he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.
For his unfailing love toward those who fear him
is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
He has removed our sins as far from us
as the east is from the west.
The LORD is like a father to his children,
tender and compassionate to those who fear him.
For he knows how weak we are;
he remembers we are only dust.
Our days on earth are like grass;
like wildflowers, we bloom and die.
The wind blows, and we are gone—
as though we had never been here.
But the love of the LORD remains forever
with those who fear him.
His salvation extends to the children’s children
of those who are faithful to his covenant,
of those who obey his commandments!
The LORD has made the heavens his throne;
from there he rules over everything.
Praise the LORD, you angels,
you mighty ones who carry out his plans,
listening for each of his commands.
Yes, praise the LORD, you armies of angels
who serve him and do his will!
Praise the LORD, everything he has created,
everything in all his kingdom.
Let all that I am praise the LORD.
CONSIDER THIS
It may seem misplaced to open a series on Psalm 103 with a title straight from Exodus, but the choice is deliberate. Psalm 103 is a bit of a biography of God. Divinely inspired scripture that distills down his qualities and teaches these truths to our hearts. More than just a list of fancy compliments, this psalm creates, for us, a tangible anatomy of an intangible God through declaration of his most accessible attributes. It is the “I am” of the I Am.
Consider that a God grand and powerful enough to create and sustain the entire universe, all manner of species, intelligence, and influence throughout the world, as well as divinely provide for specific seasons generation after generation, who works outside of time, outside of space, outside of any constraint we could imagine, could have, for all intents and purposes, left creation to its own devices, if he wanted.
After hovering over the darkness and chaos and setting into motion the life breath that would sustain all things, God could have easily sat back and remained uninvolved for the rest of all time, watching from afar his perfect plans unfold.
But instead, we see throughout Scripture the in-breaking of a God who desires to be known. We see him walking in the garden, burning in a bush, instructing armies, appointing kings, speaking through dreams and visions, we see him in a whisper, in a Word, in a wonder. All the way to the actual incarnation, the birth of Christ, Immanuel, God with us.
“God the Father knew you and chose you long ago, and his Spirit has made you holy. As a result, you have obeyed him and have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:2 NLT)
God with us also knew us. And from the sound of this scripture, that knowing did not just begin upon each of our individual birthdays. It began long ago before we were yet even a twinkle in our parents’ eyes. God with us, knew us, and wants to be known by us.
As Christians, a large part of our faith life is filled with coming to know about God. But as humans we must remain careful about what it is we think we know. To quote Aristotle, “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.”
We like to know things! We like to put things in nice little well-defined boxes. We like to summarize and prioritize and categorize almost everything in our lives down to manageable digestion and conclusion. But for the infinite, eternal, omniscient Creator, most of our usual approaches to knowing are simply insufficient and so it becomes necessary for us to keep surrendering what we think we know in order to pursue what we are meant to know.
Remember when Jesus returned to his hometown and the people stumbled in their understanding, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” (Matt. 13:55). Indeed it was, but in this case, one truth was threatening to obscure another very important one. Sometimes even our most well-intentioned knowledge of God can inhibit us from experiencing what he really wants to show us, simply because we are human.
This series is an invitation to learn anew God’s nature. For the next two weeks let us read Psalm 103 together each day as if for the first time, every time. Wiping clear what we think we know already and opening our hearts to make more space for the God who knows us and wants to be known.
Let all that I am praise the LORD;
with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name.
Let this desire to know him and be known by him become, like the psalmist declares, an offering of total praise and total worship.
THE PRAYER
Lord, we thank you that you are not a far-off God that we could praise and glorify but never really know. We thank you that you have given us this desire to know you and, in that, we celebrate that you also want to be known by us. For it is in the knowing you that we become truly whole, truly loved, truly free. Help us look into our hearts and find what notions we already believe about you. Help us clear out ideas we may need to reform or let go. Help us hold fast to the tenets of who you truly are. We know you are infinitely faceted, Lord. Help us make space for the pieces of you that you desire to show us right now through this series. Amen.
