This morning I praise you, Lord, for what will come today: the unknown, the unplanned, the interruptions, the painful and the pleasant. You, Lord God, are the good Savior, my Shield, my Strength, my Stronghold (Ps. 18:2b). You are all I need for today.  It is a certainty that you will do what is best in your faithfulness, in your goodness, in your wisdom, in your love, in your righteousness, in your grace, in your power.

I praise you for the privilege of being weak—there is so much out of my control (99.9%), while all is within yours. You know what you are doing, you have a plan, you are moving all to a conclusion, bringing it down to a point from which all will expand into eternity, filling the universe with good, righteous, godly and gracious acts, events and beings. No one can stop you, no one can thwart you.

I praise you for your Word and for the wonder of meditating on it, having it trickle down into my being, bring cleansing, insight, transformation and joy. You are the great Wonder yourself, always having more to reveal to us of your Glorious and Gracious character.

I praise you now for what you will show today, do today, provide today. May I give you glory all through today, Lord, by choosing to obey what I know to be true, trusting you, praising you in and for all things, delighting in my weaknesses, rejoicing in your strength, exalting in your righteousness, wisdom and power.

I bow before you in worship, I rise up to walk with you in obedience, in godly fear, desiring to bring you glory before the seen and unseen hosts. Amen.

Lord God, it is wonderful to know you, to be your child, to be in your Kingdom. I praise you for the privilege you give us of knowing you now and knowing much of what is to be.  Knowing that you are in loving and wise control of what comes my way; that you protect the weak; that you have defeated the enemy; that my future is in your hands; that I will spend eternity in heaven with you; that there will be the pleasure of your presence, the power of your purpose, the goodness of your glory.

Therefore here on earth, as my body gets weaker, as I lose abilities, as I go downhill, my level of expectation, joy and praise goes up, for I am closer to going to be with you!  What a wonderful reality: I live in an open-ended time box that spills out into ever-better things even as life deteriorates on earth.

The very losses that depress most people intensify my desire to be with you, remind me of how privileged I am to be weak in your hands, the means of glory for you in this life, the favor of living by faith, of praising by trust and of obeying in belief.

You, Lord God, are my focus, my Father, my favorite One.  “Whom have I in heaven but you and earth has nothing I desire besides you.” (Ps. 73:25)  To you be glory forever and ever. To you be glory today in my being, living, thinking, speaking and acting. May I obey you in all, being a glory-giver, honor-maker, God-lover. Amen.

Praise be to you, Lord God, King of Creation, for your great and gracious heart. Praise you that you look down and see every single person on this earth: each one’s needs, desires, suffering, rebellion and anger.  I praise you that you work in the life of each one to supply their needs (Matt 5:45), to bring them help, to bring them into your Kingdom (John 16:8-10).

Psa 146:7  “He upholds the cause of the oppressed” [You went right to the core of the problem, Lord Jesus, providing rescue from the oppression of Satan, of sin and of self—all other oppression oozes out of these three. Praise be to you, Lord Jesus, for paying the price of great, deep, profound, excruciating suffering to provide the only escape from this oppression.  Praise you that you give grace, guidance and goodness to your children in the midst of every oppression so we can rise above it.]

“and gives food to the hungry.” [You are the One who provides our daily bread, you give enough to live on–although people often squander it, or withhold it from others.  We praise you that you are not like that but give to all.]
“The LORD sets prisoners free,” [We are all bound by aspects of sin: the web of Satan that has snared us in its sticky strands. Just being born into a broken and twisted world results in quirks and twists in our personalities that bring problems, difficulties and oppression. Our upbringing and family culture in a sinful world built dysfunctional thoughts, feelings and desires into our being.  Our worldview and its internalized values ensnare us in destructive feelings, desires and goals.  All these produce emotional traps, giving false answers to the great and proper thirst for approval, for significance, for belonging, for security. They then produce fear: fear of man, fear of the future, fear of failure, fear of pain, loss and hurt.  Satan uses all these to oppress, control and in the end to kill all he can.

But You, Lord Jesus, have opened the door to the prison of the devil, you have called us to step out of the place of oppression into the light of your Love, into the rich relationship where our fears can be washed away in the river of your goodness and grace and glory.  In you we belong, we have significance, we have security, we have approval.  In you there is the certainty of your shepherding us through every valley of life into the wonder of your everlasting dwelling in heaven.

You have provided all that is needed in order to set us free.  You are worthy of great honor, praise and exaltation, of obedience, glory and thanksgiving.  I lift you up, praise your Name and exalt your Word above all things.

You, O Yahweh, the great I AM, are the perfect balance, the perfect combination of traits: truth and grace, love and wrath, righteousness and forgiveness, wisdom and knowledge, power and tenderness, goodness and impartialness, hatred for sin and love for sinners.

The more we know you, the more reason there is for worship.  You, O God, are wonderful, fear-inspiring, comfort-giving, sin-revealing, grace-providing, heart-healing, attitude-correcting, soul-transforming, love-infusing, life-giving and eternal-living—what more could we want?

Knowing you means that daily we can turn more and more to you, more and more away from the tinsel and trinkets the world has to offer. Every day we can move further into your Kingdom, reveling in your being, rejoicing in your greatness, obeying your truth, joining you in your work. We can, in your power and goodness leave behind the burdens of self-centeredness and pleasure-oriented living to plunge into the river of your goodness and grace, to be swept along in the current of your love.  “The Lord reigns,” we are glad!

In Gethsemane, “horror and dismay overcame him, and he said,…“My heart is ready to break with grief.” (Mark 14:4, NEB).  The death of Jesus on the cross was one he shrank back from, so horrendous was the prospect. It was not, I believe,  primarily the intense physical suffering of beating, scourging and crucifixion that brought his dismay. There were three other, far more horrendous things that brought horror to Jesus.

First he was to become sin.  The ugliness, the stench, the squalor, the repulsiveness of sin, these he would become.  Think of being lowered into a pit of liquid manure, its greenish surface roiling with maggots, the stench overwhelming, the prospect utterly repulsive; and as you go down into it, it gets into your eyes, nose, mouth, and then lungs, engulfing you in its terribleness.  This is nothing compared to Christ’s becoming sin for us, the evil of it entering His very being.

Then He was under the righteous wrath of God which had been stored up from the beginning of the world against all the sin ever committed and which would be committed.  The unimaginably immense weight of wrath,  coming from His own Father, crashed down upon Jesus, utterly crushing him.

And third, Jesus was wrenched out of the relationship of the Trinity, the perfect place, the unflawed unity, the beautiful balance, the wonderful warmth that had existed from eternity. As He became sin and had wrath poured upon Him, He could not stay in that intimate relationship where there was no sin.    The fabric of the trinity was ripped, it’s essence smashed, it’s unity destroyed. The pain of rejection, being utterly alone, and having become sin, being utterly unworthy of this relationship, was the worst part of His death. This rending of the trinity brought, I believe,  the greatest suffering of His sacrifice, not only to Jesus, but to the Father and the Spirit also.

The amount of horror for Jesus in this experience was immeasurably great, as it is immeasurably incomprehensible to us.  It was an infinite suffering borne by an infinite heart of love under an infinite wrath.  And it brought about an infinite solution for finite beings.  Only the God who is Love could do this.  Only Jesus could be our Savior, willing to go through suffering which was beyond the comprehension of angels. And He did it to save those who are lower than Angels.  Halleluah!