04/03/2011 - Three wise bits of counselling

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“Sing to Him a new song; play skilfully with a shout of joy.” (Psalm 33: 3)

God likes progress and new things; even our praises must be sung that way. There are three bits of counselling we’ve got to hold on to in the psalm above to rejoice the heart of our Father and also ours. The first one is that we must sing a new song and at each divine intervention to answer our prayers we’ve got to sing it to God. It’ll be much better if there’s something in that new song related to a deliverance we’ve been granted by the Most High because our spirit will get closer to our Father and He’ll bless us even more.

Very often a defeat comes after a great victory. But, no evil will overcome us if we’re hooked up to the Lord and if the trial gets worse He Himself will see to it that we’ll be delivered.

In the episode of the multiplication of the loaves of bread our Master teaches us we’ve got to behave with order and decency (Mark 6: 30 -44). Though the people there had spent three days with Jesus without any food, He demanded they must be split up into groups of fifty and a hundred – that must have taken quite a while because there were five thousand men apart from the women and children. Someone has come up with the number around twenty thousand people meaning they had to make do about two hundred groups – suppose there were a hundred people in each one of them. How much room was it necessary and how long did it take to accommodate so many people and, then, to feed all of them? What we know is that the Lord didn’t share the loaves and the fish before everything was done according to His plan.

The second bit of counselling of the psalmist in the biblical passage above is to play skilfully and that’s utterly important because what we do for our God must be done with excellence. Those who are reckless with their private matters and also those related to the Lord surely won’t be blessed. Well, those who don’t take care of those things our Father puts in their hands aren’t pleasing Him at all. That’s also true for their offerings at the church – many offer abundantly and with joy for the work of God; others just give some crumbs because they’re not interested in the work of evangelization we do or the message conveyed to sinners which must always come from our Father.

And finally, the psalmist instructs us to praise the Lord with a shout of joy. Sportsmen, for instance, begin their worm-up exercises once they’ve arrived at the competition field and they never begin a competition without being trained previously. Every athlete knows that very well and we should know it likewise. There are some good ways to do some sort of spiritual warm-up: sing praises, read the Word and meditate on what the Lord is telling to our hearts.

So, once we’re “warmed-up” we can really praise our God with our fully rejoiced mouths. By the way, the Word states that a man’s heart speaks of what is in it (Luke 6:45). Therefore, without that spiritual “warm-up”, we’ll only speak of troubles, battles and defeats instead of truly praising the Almighty One.

In Christ, with love,

R. R. Soares