Read the Book: January - MarchSample

Week 4

Psalms 10-12

God’s Everlasting Presence

If we are being honest with ourselves, there are many seasons within the Christian life where we will ask God, “Where are you?” All too often it is easy for us, like the Psalmist, to focus on the “negatives” of any situation and wonder why God is allowing it, and assuming that because it is happening, God must be absent. Through the Psalms, God has provided His people a way to mourn and hurt that does not duck their heads in the sand nor enables them to be hopeless. Hard circumstances can make our faith shaky and light seems frighteningly dim, but we can remember and rehearse the promises of God that He will somehow, as the Psalmist points out, “guard us and protect this generation forever” (Ps 12:7).

So what does all this mean for us? It means that in the moments where we want to cry out, “God, where are you?” we can rest in the promise provided by our Father that believers “...received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we can cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Rom 8:15) and that He is a “helper of the fatherless” (Ps 10:14). This should remind us that the location of our stability in our life is not our emotions, circumstances, or our strength but only in the faithful love of our Father. God is not a Father who adopts but later forsakes those He adopts based on their ability to keep their end of the bargain. Never! God is a Father who will never forsake His children because His perfect Son pleased Him on their behalf.

Family Connection: Play a game of telephone. One person whispers something into the ear of the person next to them. Then that person says exactly what they heard to the next person, and so on, until it gets back to the person who started. That person then says what they heard out loud. After, read Psalm 10:17-18. In the game, we inclined our ears to the person whispering the message to us. In the same way, the Bible says God inclines His ear to us - only He never hears the wrong thing! We can talk to God and He will always hear us!