Psalm 131
1. Who am I prideful towards?
Here are two ways to know if you are prideful/haughty:
a) we are more aware of what everybody else is doing that we are of what we are becoming
b) I cannot celebrate my success so I celebrate other people’s failure
2. What is beyond me?
Three calibrating realities about the unknowable…
a) Knowledge is one of the things that separates God from his creation
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
-Isaiah 55:8-9
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
- Deuteronomy 29:29
b) Not knowing is part of the human experience.
“For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part: then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
- I Corinthians 13:9-13
c) Not knowing makes faith necessary.
3. How is my soul?
Nine needs of the soul…
1) a keeper
2) a center
3) a future
4) to be with God
5) rest
6) freedom
7) blessing
8) satisfaction
9) gratitude
4. What is my hope in?
1. Who am I prideful towards?
Here are two ways to know if you are prideful/haughty:
a) we are more aware of what everybody else is doing that we are of what we are becoming
b) I cannot celebrate my success so I celebrate other people’s failure
2. What is beyond me?
Three calibrating realities about the unknowable…
a) Knowledge is one of the things that separates God from his creation
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
-Isaiah 55:8-9
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
- Deuteronomy 29:29
b) Not knowing is part of the human experience.
“For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part: then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
- I Corinthians 13:9-13
c) Not knowing makes faith necessary.
3. How is my soul?
Nine needs of the soul…
1) a keeper
2) a center
3) a future
4) to be with God
5) rest
6) freedom
7) blessing
8) satisfaction
9) gratitude
4. What is my hope in?