DAILY DEVOTIONAL REFLECTION (PASTORAL FEEDING) BE STRONG: DON’T BE AFRAID OF ANY LIFE STORMS By: Ptr Romeo Aranez DATA: Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all you that hope in the LORD.—Psalm 31:24. THEOLOGICAL AFFIRMATION: Chuck Swindoll taught valuable lessons of focus in times of crises and troubles, he said,” Dont focus on the situation or youll become angry. Don’t focus on yourself, or youll become filled with self-pity. Don’t focus on someone to blame, or youll begin complaining. Don’t focus on the present, or youll miss the point of what God is wishing to achieve in your life. Indeed, focus is very important as what King David’s learned lessons in the past struggles, crises and problems life he faced. Hope to God’s moral attribute characters of who He is as the foundational of believing things not seen with our naked eyes and this kind of hope will not disappoint to them that believe as proven and tested in David’s journey of relationship with his God. There is no preaching like that which grows out of our own experience. You perceive, dear friends, that David had trusted in the Lord; in very sore and singular trouble God had delivered him; and at the close of that deliverance he wrote this Psalm, to be sung by the faithful of all time and every clime, and then he gave this exhortation which grew out of his own experience. O my brethren, we shall never speak to the heart of our hearers, unless what we say has been first engraver on our own hearts. The best noses of a sermon are those that are written on our own inner consciousness. If we speak of the things which we have tasted, and handled, and made our own, we speak with a certainty and with an authority which God is pleased to use for the comfort of his people. Think, then, that you can hear David, who has long since fallen asleep, speaking out of his royal tomb, and saying, as the result of his own happy experience, Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all you that hope in the Lord. CONTEXTUALIZATION: This passage is a very good devotional reflection in times of crises and troubles, however many Christians fail to observe notable truths of the text. In considering this text, I would first of all bid you notice AN APPROVED COMPANY, to whom the psalmist is speaking: all ye that hope in the Lord. it makes some general promises, but its choicer words are given to persons of a special character. Judge for yourselves how far you come under the description of the text, all you that hope in the Lord. You perceive, first, that they are men of hope. Gods people are a hoping people, and therefore hoping for the fulfillment of the promises God has made to them. Next, they hope for good things, for this is implied when the psalmist speaks of those that hope in the Lord, for no man hopes for evil things whose hope is in the Lord. If you are the persons spoken of in the text, this hope of yours is rooted, and grounded, and established in the Lord: all you that hope in the Lord. This, then, is the approved company: all you that hope in the Lord. Not, you that hope in yourselves; not, you that hope in your priests; not, you that have any confidences anywhere else; but you who hope in God alone. Secondly, my text seems to intimate that there is AN OCCASIONAL WEAKNESS,—I might say, A FREQUENT WEAKNESS which is apparent in many of those that hope in the Lord. It is a dangerous weakness, for it is a weakness of the heart. The text says, Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart; wherein it is implied that, sometimes, the heart of them that hope in the Lord grows weak. As you well know, heart disease is a very dangerous disease; even if a very little is wrong with the heart, it is a serious matter, for every other part of the body will be affected. Some of Gods own people are occasionally, and many of them very often, subject to a weakness of the heart. They lose their courage, their joy departs from them, and they become timorous and fearful. This weakness occurs on many occasions: 1. Sometimes we have seen those who hope in the Lord very weak in heart under great suffering. 2. Also in the battle of life. A man is struggling hard to gain a livelihood; perhaps he has not any means of earning even bread for his wife and children, and it is very trying for a man when the cupboard is bare, and the childrens clothes scarcely cover them from the cold. In such circumstances, his heart sometimes fails him, and then it is that God bids him be of good courage, and strengthens heart 3. Felt in times of temptation. I have known Christian men who have had to work among ungodly companions, and their spirits have been vexed every day with the filthy conversation of the wicked, and their taunts, and jeers, and blasphemies; and in such cases the heart has oftentimes grown very heavy, and sick, and faint 4. In the midst of great labor for the Lord. They are doing all they can do, and yet they do not see the success they expected. They are not weary of the work, but they are weary in it. They see very clearly the imperfections in their service, and they are further troubled, because some who should help them, do not help them. They meet with cold hearts where they reckoned on enthusiasm; instead of generosity, it may be that there is niggardliness; and, instead of prayerfulness burning like coals of juniper, there is lukewarmness or spiritual death. At such times, the man of God puts his hand into his bosom, and he says, My heart, my heart fails me. Then the message of the text comes in, Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord. Host men are subject to fainting fits at times. Even David became weak and faint; and Samson, after he had cried exultingly, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass, have I slain a thousand men, yet, for want of a draught of water, was ready to lie down, and faint and die. The best of men are but men at the best; and, therefore, who wonders if their hearts sometimes fail them in the day of suffering, in the hour of battle, or under the broiling sun, when they are laboring for their Lord? If this weakness of the heart should continue, it will be very injurious. At the present time, I believe that it restricts enterprise. That young man would go as a missionary to China, but his heart fails him. This confidence makes the feeble strong, and the timid brave; may we all have a large share of it! God deliver us from faintness of heart, lest we injure the kingdom of our Lord by withholding our service! And, dear friends, this weakness of heart endangers the success of the best worker. He who fights most valiantly may be on the verge of victory, and yet be defeated, if his heart should then fail him. I have no doubt, in reading the records of many campaigns, you must have noticed that men have gone on from victory to victory, and suddenly there has been a pause because their hearts failed them, This feeble heart pleads many excuses Thirdly, I call your most earnest heed to the trumpet voice of the exhortation in the text, A SEASONABLE EXHORTATION: Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart. I like the way this is put. It is not alone, Be of good courage; there is an and with it: and he shall strengthen your heart. At the same time, the exhortation is not omitted. It does not say, He shall comfort your heart, therefore you need do nothing. I may not be able to explain to you how it is so, but I know that it is so as a matter of fact; and that God requires us to be of good courage at the same moment that he says that he will strengthen our heart. Lastly, A CHEERING PROMISE: He shall strengthen your heart. God alone can strengthen the heart. I suppose that physicians can do something for weak hearts, though I do not know. As a general rule, when a man dies suddenly and they do not know what it is that killed him, they say, It is disease of the heart. The heart is a mysterious portion of our being, and needs great care. Spiritually, the mercy is that God, who made the heart, understands the heart; and he who sees its weakness, knows how to strengthen it. How does God strengthen mens hearts? 1. by gracious providences. Something very unexpected happens; I have, myself, learnt to expect the unexpected. 2. by the kindly fellowship of friends. Paul was often much refreshed by Christian associates. The Lord can send someone who, as iron sharpens iron, may sharpen you, and make you ready for service. A word fitly spoken—a word upon wheels—as the Hebrew has it,—how good it is when it comes in just at the right time! It is like apples of gold in baskets of silver. Such are goodly words brought to us by men of faith and experience, whom God sends to u 3. by a precious promise. Who knows the wonderful power of a text of Scripture? 4. God the Holy Spirit has a secret way of strengthening the courage of Gods people, which none of us can explain. Have you never felt it? You may have gone to your bed, sick at heart, weary, and worn, and sad, and you wake in the morning ready for anything. Perhaps, in the middle of the night, you awake, and the visitations of God are manifested to you, and you feel as happy as if everything went the way you would like it to go. APPLICATION: Dear friends, if you want to get out of diffidence, and timidity, and despondency, you must rouse yourselves up. This is incumbent upon you, for the text puts it so: Be of good courage. Do not sit still, and rub your eyes, and say, I cannot help it, I must always be dull like this. You must not be so; in the name of God, you are commanded in the text to be of good courage.Wherefore, arise, and shake yourself from the dust. Believe that , dear friend, put your trust in God. I know that a great many, who are very sad and low in spirit, , We wish that we could cheer you up. I do not say that, but I do say this, Be of good courage. Be of good courage. It is the Lords command to you. Do you not think that your God deserves to be trusted? What has he ever done that you should doubt him? Does he not deserve your most confident faith? If you are not of good courage, what will happen to you? I will not say you are a coward, but I will say you will look very much like one. I have heard of one who said that he was of a very retiring disposition; he could not attend bible study, or share the gospel, he was so retiring! I have also heard of a soldier who, in the day of battle, was so very retiring that they shot him as a deserter! I would not have you deserve the cowards doom, and speak of it as retiring. Why you are afraid? Is God with you, and ye you are afraid? Will God lie to us? Has God forsaken us? Has he forgotten to be gracious? Has omnipotence grown weak? What makes you worry? Has he been a wilderness to you? Has the manna ceased to fall, or the waters to flow? Go, yield thyself up to him; ask him, by his grace, to make you heroic, instead of being numbered among the fearful and the unbelieving, who turn their backs in the day of battle, and seek their own selfish ease and comfort.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 04:29:27 +0000
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