Freedom For Today

“I will exalt you, my God and King, and praise your name forever and ever. I will praise you every day; yes, I will praise you forever. Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise! No one can measure his greatness.”

Psalm 145 has so many great themes for us to explore over the next few days. I want you to keep the theme of praise in your mind throughout this week and ask yourself, “What does it mean for me to praise God?”

In these verses, there are some time references: “forever” and “every day.” Those words give us some ideas about how much praise should be a part of our lives. All consuming. Eternal. Daily from now until forever. And why praise God? Because he deserves it. He is so great nothing can even measure it. Think about something you consider extremely great. Most likely, at some point you have raved about that thing and probably have told everyone you know about it. God is greater than that. By a lot.

Here’s your freedom for today: you are most yourself when you are praising God. We are physical and spiritual beings designed uniquely for relationship with God. When that relationship is in proper alignment, we get to experience a level of freedom that is truly supernatural. When we praise God as a daily part of our existence, we step into the life we were designed to live. It is there that we best know God and best know ourselves.

“I will reward them with a long life and give them my salvation.”

We finish Psalm 91 with the promise of rewards: long life and salvation. Whenever we hear the phrase “long life,” we usually think of being 100 years old and peacefully dying in our sleep. But that word “salvation” is interesting showing up in the same sentence as “long life.” Perhaps we need to rethink our old-age imagery and dream bigger.

Christians talk a lot about eternal life, but often this is more like a destination than a continuation. “Do you know where you would go if you died tonight??” is the classic pressure-filled evangelistic question. But what if we really think about what it means to have a long life? So long you might even call it eternal. How might you plan differently for your life now if you had eternity in mind?

Here’s your freedom for today: you were meant to live. I mean really live. Death was never part of the design of God’s world. When you accept the rescuing love of Jesus, you immediately return to the reality that you were meant to have — your life becomes eternal. Funny how everyone has been searching for the fountain of youth or the key to eternal life, almost as if we have a deep yearning for the way things were meant to be. And here Jesus is handing it out for free. But don’t wait until you die to start really living in God’s kingdom. Dwell there now, walking in a victory that is truly supernatural. Enjoy the scenery, you’ve got all the time in this world and the next…

“When they call on me, I will answer; I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue and honor them.”

With so many of these verses, it is easy to gloss over it and respond with a basic, “Well, that’s nice…” Maybe if you want to be an extra good Christian you might take the time to make a verse quote-pic for Instagram. Yay Jesus! But whenever I am just soaking in one verse at a time, I like to really feel the depth of meaning that is there. These words are revealing the very nature of God, so there is no end to the depth we can find here.

Have you ever called someone and waited for them to call you back? After a while, you might start to wonder if they forgot about you. But this verse has a rock solid guarantee: “when they [those who love and trust God] call on me, I will answer.” Will. Period. Then he says he will be with us in trouble. That strikes me because when I picture kids in trouble I imagine them sitting alone in a room. But God is with us in trouble. Not only that, but he will rescue us. And as if that were not enough, here’s the really crazy part: he will honor us.

Here’s your freedom for today: God wants to lift you up. He answers when you call, he stays by your side in troubling times, he rescues you and he lifts you up to restore your dignity. God made humans to have a great place of honor in his kingdom. When we fell, we ended up in a deep, dark pit. God is in the midst of doing the restoration work that will return us to the place he intended for us: royalty sitting with him at his table.

 

“The Lord says, ‘I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name.'”

Anything that starts with “The Lord says…” is a big huge PAY ATTENTION sign for us. We know that the whole Bible is the word of God, but sometimes he wants to make sure we are really listening. So these words feel extra weighty to me as I read them: “I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name.” Glad he got our attention for that one!

My next question is this: how do I make sure I am loving God? How do I make sure I am trusting him so that I can be rescued and protected? These are fundamentally flawed questions, however, because they put all the power back on ourselves. We are the ones who need rescuing, remember? If I have to love God enough or trust God enough in order to be rescued then my own strength is my ticket to access to God. This is the opposite of the Gospel. If you want to love God, then you are loving God. If you go God’s way because you know your own way will get you no where, then you are trusting him. Remember Rahab who helped the spies? She wasn’t even one of God’s chosen people but she saw that she was going to get destroyed if she stuck with her own people and gods. (And for the record her spiritual entrance exam was lying really well, so go figure that one out…)

Here’s your freedom for today: there is no spiritual measuring stick. There, I said it. God is not measuring your performance every day and deciding what blessings to dole out based on how well you did. We need to reject this false gospel and instead cling to what is true: freedom is found the closer we are to Christ. We get hurt when we sin not because we aren’t measuring up, but because sin is inherently dangerous and harmful. You have absolutely no ability to measure up to anything, but you can imitate Jesus. Monkey-see, monkey-do. Simon Says. Children do this all the time. They do what they see their parents doing. That’s it. We just need to do what we see our Father doing every day and we’ll be just fine.

“You will trample upon lions and cobras; you will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet!”

This verse is packed with more meaning than might first meet the eye. Sure, we’d all like to be invincible and fend off lions and tigers and bears (you know…). But God prophesied that we would crush serpents under our feet since the moment Adam and Eve fell.

In Genesis 3, there is an image of a serpent’s head and a person’s heel as God doles out the punishment for Satan in verse 15. It is the moment in which God reveals that Satan will not win the ultimate victory. “He will strike your head and you will strike his heel.” I don’t know about you, but it seems pretty clear that the foot will win in a battle involving a head getting stepped on.

Here’s your freedom for today: God has always planned Satan’s defeat. Jesus will crush Satan’s head under his foot. He did on the cross and he will stomp the final stomp when he fully rescues the world once and for all. Sometimes we feel like we are the ones that need to crush Satan, but remember that you are one of the ones in need of saving. From the moment Satan started meddling with humans, God has had a plan to rescue you and me. This kingdom of destruction and death will come to an end.