Psalm 23 – Valley

According to Angel, Psalm 23 is the most famous Psalm of all. And I suppose I see why. It sounds so serene, so gentle with the lush green pastures in the background, the peaceful streams of water flowing by and the image of God as the Sheppard taking care of your every needs and wants.

That’s great and all, and I do not deny these promises of God for one moment. But this does not mean that you are to remain complacent, not doing anything, resting on your laurels and be comfortable. If you read verse 4 carefully:

⁴ Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
         I will fear no evil;
         For You are with me;
         Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. (NKJV)

David is walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It doesn’t read, “if and when I do walk through the valley of the shadow of death, then I will fear no evil”. I’m imagining that this “valley of the shadow of death” is this world we live in, fallen, broken and on the precipice of complete decay.

Yet there is still hope!

You and I are traversing this dark valley. That be the place and the people God has placed on your heart to reach out and share the good news to, carrying with us the light that is Him and leaving a trail of goodness and mercy (v6). And we need not fear because He is with us.

Where is your valley of the shadow of death?

Filed under: Cogitations, God, Life, Psalm

Psalm 22 – Prophetic Motion

Sorry for the week and few days delay in posting this up. I did have quite a lot on my platter and I did not want to deal this great Psalm with the horrendous injustice of a poorly written post. Which should be the case anyway for all of them, except for the fact that this Psalm just had to be a prophetic retelling of Jesus’ affliction.

My original intention of this post was to just copy and paste the entire psalm and post script it with a simple word of thanks. Because if Jesus didn’t do what He did upon the cross, bored our sins and became the great sin himself because he was the perfect sacrifice, I wouldn’t be who I am today. The very crux of my faith is founded upon that.

And what is even freakier is that this Psalm was penned way before Jesus’ time (well duh!). lol. Jesus fulfilled the messianic prophecies in this Psalm and I strongly recommend you go take a read of it yourself. I really cannot add anything more to that, apart from encouraging you to recognise the sacrifice Jesus took to ensure we have redemption readily accessible.

But this Psalm doesn’t just contain the prophecies that was fulfilled at the cross, there’s more post-crucifixion.

²⁷ All the ends of the world
         Shall remember and turn to the LORD,
         And all the families of the nations
         Shall worship before You.^[d]
28 For the kingdom is the LORD’s,
         And He rules over the nations.
²⁹ All the prosperous of the earth
         Shall eat and worship;
         All those who go down to the dust
         Shall bow before Him,
         Even he who cannot keep himself alive.
³⁰ A posterity shall serve Him.
         It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation,
³¹ They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born,
         That He has done this. (NKJV)

I believe, this part of the psalm is not fully realised yet. We’re still living in it! With each succeeding generations, it is our impetus to spread the good news, to bear testimony to God’s righteousness and bring Glory to His name.

Sometimes I doubt that truly the Gospel could reach every nook and cranny the earth can offer. But knowing that half of this Psalm has already been fulfilled is hope enough that I will do everything possible by which God has strengthen me with to make His name known.

We are still living out a prophecy set in motion, and I will not deny anyone anymore of the life that accompanies this truth.

Filed under: Cogitations, God, Life, Psalm

Waste

Most of you know that I work 10am – 6pm.

Most of you would be extremely envious of those working hours as that allows you a little sleep in in the morning and miss the peak hour traffic.

But I find that I’ve been wasting the time.

Towards the end of last year I managed to get somewhat of a habit to wake up early enough to go to the gym.

But nowadays, even though I’m sleeping the same time, I’m waking up later, as late as I can, wasting 30 bucks a fortnight on a gym I don’t go. And by the time I come home, at the least for the past don’t know how many months I haven’t got time to do the things I want to do.

For example writing my Psalm a day post without cutting into my work time. (sorry Psalm 22 is once again delayed…)

Chilling out with my back catalogue of games on my xbox.

Reading the plethora of books I’ve bought but never got past the first chapter.

Practicing music to actually get to a point where I can confidently reflect that I’ve played piano since I was four and played keyboards for church since I was 13. I’m nearly 22 now and if I could even have 1% of any of my keyboard heroes I will be at the least a 100 fold better.

I blame my environmental factors, chiefly a poor foundation. Take this as a warning that DO NOT EVER SEND YOUR CHILDREN TO YAMAHA MUSIC SCHOOL FOR PIANO. Group lessons for piano, wait, the ELECTONE, sucks big balls. My technique blows big time, because I got away with just good enough, cause the teacher had to listen to another 20+ students who also just like me did not want to be there.

Even though I was there for a few years, it was then followed up by amatuerish teachers, who weren’t really qualified piano teachers but just decent young pianist who passed their grade 8 and needed to make some cash. And there again, my piano skills suffered. Heck even when I was 13, I didn’t think I would still be playing keys for church today.

I do not deny that FGA is blessed in the areas of music somehow, but I know that it probably has stifled me a bit and let me develop poor habits in musicianship cause I got good enough to get through most things that my church throws at me. Key of G for almost everything to accomodate guitarist, with the most daring either being B (if the singers could even reach that key) or F with it’s one blessed flat.

But then when I came across this site, I knew instantly that’s what I wanted. For a few years, I told myself once I get a hand on that resource, I’ll learn it, consume it, breath it until it becomes part of me. Yes I did get it towards the end of last year after much trouble with the company stateside, but has it made me a better musician? Maybe just a little bit, simply because it has opened my ears to what is possible. But then, the only place where I could utilise it is church, yet our church doens’t play the music that would motivate me to learn and incorporate all these crazy chords, fills and runs without it clashing with something or someone.

And now, the month of March, the first time in a long time where you could say I have many gigs lined up, and even the opportunity to incorporate some of the ideas that I know exist, I am finding myself struggling. Realising that I am a joke of a musician, using hacks to pass. Yes I know God has blessed me, but I can’t keep misusing it, I need to take ownership and be a good steward of it, and exercise excellence, something which I fail to do.

And once again, my bad habits as an unmotivated perfectionist rears its ugly head. I want to be the best, but I want to be the best now, if I know it can’t happen now, I won’t put the effort into it. I want to be right all the time, I want to be right from the get go, if not I don’t commit to it. My flawed mindset is that my childhood and teenage years were the ideal grace period of learning any instruments or skills, anything pass that period don’t bother picking up a new skill unless it’s completely obscure and just being a noob at it can impress little children.

So going to the places like the Ellington for the past couple of weeks to hear Graham Wood play has been a double edged sword. It made me realise how terrible I am at what I do, unmotivating me, wanting to give up now cause I can’t even attain to his standard who probably is just a small drop in the ocean that exist out there. Yet it also has inspired me to realise that, I should do something about it.

Not let it go to waste.

Filed under: Cogitations, God, Life

Delay

Only done a few days and now got delay for today’s Psalm post.

Oh well.

I rather have time to carefully articulate thoughts on this Psalm then execute a haphazard injustice towards this fantastic psalm.

Let this be a disclaimer for any Psalm post that fall on the weekend.

My next few weekends are chockers!

Filed under: Life, Psalm

Psalm 21 – Royal Permanency

I’m not going to justify this when I say that you are a king or queen by the authority bestowed from God Himself. It’s not that there aren’t verses in the bible to support my statement, but rather it’s just not within the scope of this post.

So just accept that you are spiritual royalty because whatever I am to write from here on forth for this post is based on that assumption. Terrible I know, but conveniently neccessary.

Okay maybe I can slightly justify it, but I think I am running the risk of potentially invoking some logical fallacies here.

⁴ He asked life from You, and You gave it to him—
Length of days forever and ever. (NKJV)

There you go, that’s the verse to justify my claim that you and I are royalty. Since the “he” in verse 4 refers to the king, the king who asks for life, of which God gave to him with eternal abundance, is not dissimilar to us receiving everlasting life when we enter the truth of salvation. And so from there I (il)logically infer that you and I are kings.

Argue all we want about it, but the truth exist in His word that we are one who possesses royalty, so I’ll let the Big Man up there have the final say.

Above and beyond that final say though is that, we as kings and queens trust God.

Trusting God that He has met us with good blessings.
Trusting God that He has honoured and lifted us up
Trusting God that by His presence we are exceedingly glad.

As good as all those promises are, it doesn’t compare to the mercy and unfailing love that God has for you to ensure that you remain a king.

⁷ For the king trusts in the LORD,
And through the mercy of the Most High he shall not be moved. (NKJV)

Filed under: Cogitations, God, Life, Psalm