START AND END YOUR DAY WELL!

THE WAY YOU DO THIS IMPACTS THE WAY YOU LIVE

READ PSALM 65

Psalm 65:5-8

By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness,

O God of our salvation,

the hope of all the ends of the earth

and of the farthest seas;

the one who by his strength established the mountains,

being girded with might;

who stills the roaring of the seas,

the roaring of their waves,

the tumult of the peoples,

so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs.

You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.

When someone asks you to describe the God you believe in, what do you say? When you ask someone to describe the God you believe in by observing your life, what would they say? Far too often, the two answers do not match as they should. David here describes for us the God of the universe, the eternal God, the God we believe in.

Our God, first of all, is righteous. His work is never tainted by any kind of imperfection, for it is holy in its motives, intentions, application, and in its results. God is never vindictive; every action He does is perfectly gracious and just. God hears our every cry, every word of our prayers; He knows our very thoughts and answers every prayer in the most perfect of ways.

Lest we forget, David reminds us that our God is also our Savior. How is it, that, although we have entrusted our eternal lives to Him, we can still question the way He conducts our every-day events?!

We are saved forever. We never deserved it when we were born again, and we will never merit it with our deeds now. Our salvation was based on grace, and our Lord continues to deal with us according to His grace.

God is our only hope. He is not only the hope for those who believe in Him, but also for those who mock Him and reject Him. No one breathes or moves without the sustaining power of God. The whole universe was created and set in place by Him, and  is ordered and sustained only by His power and perfect will.

Only under the control of God does the ocean roar and swallow the land in its rage, just as it calms only at God’s command. If we simply took the time to observe nature, we would be awestruck by our God. God is meticulously controlling the world; He is accomplishing His goals.

Our God has no problem in controlling nature or in controlling man. When the nations roar, they do it only because God permits it. When leaders make decisions, they are under the control of God.

As His children, who are aware of His righteous might and perfection. We should never be in fear. Our health, our circumstances, our interactions, our future, and our final destination are in the righteous hands of the God of our salvation. We do not know what the future will bring, but we do know the character, wisdom, power, and love of the One who holds it.

David cannot help but praise God. He begins in the morning and he finishes at night.

Maybe that reveals our problem: we too often begin our days chasing the cares of the world and end exhausted by our efforts, forgetting to meditate on our God.

We become so busy that we lose sight of what is true and what has merely been produced by our fears. We live our lives as if we were in control and are driven by earthly desires. We lose sight that God is in control and that His purposes are perfect and eternal.

People are not obstacles to our sanctification, but they are the instruments God wants to use to produce godliness in us. Circumstances are not obstacles to a godly life, but the instruments God uses to expose our earthly desires.

If God is continually at work for our own good, intending to produce godliness in us, then our only response should be to praise and thank Him.

We need to begin our morning by preparing our hearts, reflecting on our God. Our day, without a doubt, will be different. We must also end our day by evaluating the way we responded to our circumstances, reviewing our thoughts, our interactions with others. And then we must rejoice in what the Lord is doing in our lives, even when we see that we must ask forgiveness, first to God and then to those we have wronged.

We all desire to live our lives for the glory of God. So we need to prepare ourselves, as we start each day, with an awareness of our God and we must end each day by examining how we responded to Him.

I am resolved to know my God better and to rejoice in His perfecting work in me. Then I will exclaim like David: “You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy”.