Faithbase

Good morning and welcome to Praying the Bible, and I'm trying to find a happy medium here. We've done it a couple of different ways. I've prayed through a long section and then edited that into different parts. I didn't like that. And I'm not entirely happy with praying a piece at a time at different times. What I'm going to do today is pray through whatever amount, but I'm going to stop and just I'll still be in the particular psalm. I guess what I'm saying is I'm going to pray this a piece at a time, but at the same time. So I'll be sitting here, I'll stop the camera, won't do any editing or anything, and just restart it and continue praying. So we'll try that, because the idea here is to make this as authentic, I suppose you can say, as possible. For me it is, because I'm praying this, but I'm hoping that for you it's something useful as well, so that you're blessed by this as we pray the Word of God. So I'm going to read Psalm 18, I'll read a few verses and start praying, and then we'll just kind of go that way. Psalm 18, to the chief musician, a psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. And he said, I will love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I will trust, my shield and the horn of my salvation and my stronghold. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, so I shall be saved from my enemies as through verse 3, and Heavenly Father, we do love you, Lord. Your scripture says, Jesus said that the most important commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and that is to give ourselves completely to you. I'm reminded this last week here on Faith Base on this channel, we talked about presenting our bodies a living sacrifice to you, Lord Jesus, and how that means that everything we do is to be for your glory, Lord God. The thoughts we have, the words we speak, the actions we commit, Lord God, everything that we do should be a blessing, should be a glory to you, Lord God, because I will love you, Lord, my strength. You are the one who gives us the strength to do the right thing. You are the one who gives us both the desire and the ability to do your good will, Heavenly Father. I pray this morning that your blessings would be upon us as we express our love to you, and the primary way, of course, that we show our love to you is by showing love to other people, Lord God. We love our neighbor as ourself, and that, in turn, is a means of showing love to you, because it is a walk of obedience, Heavenly Father. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I will trust. Lord, there is nothing else in this life that we can rest upon, that we can stand firm upon. We look around us in the world today, everything seems to be falling apart, and even while things go to pieces around us, you are our rock, you are our fortress, our deliverer, the one in whom we trust, Lord God. We stand firm on you, and Jesus told us that if we want a house, a life that will stand firm in the storms that come against us throughout this life, then we need to build this life upon what you taught, Lord Jesus. And so when we talk about you being our fortress and our rock, we, of course, are recognizing that in order to experience that, Lord, we need to walk in your ways. I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised, so shall I be saved from my enemies. My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold, the horn, of course, is a sign of strength. Our salvation does not depend upon us, Lord, it depends upon you. If it depended upon us, if we were the ones who secured our salvation, then we could certainly be the ones who lose it. And Lord God, if you secure it, it is not to be lost. Jesus said that no one snatches his sheep from his hand, his chosen ones from his hand, Lord God. And so you are the shield and the horn of our salvation, our stronghold, Lord. All of these things remind us that in this life we have a strong position of peace, of prosperity, not prosperity financially necessarily, Lord God, you bless us, but prosperity in the sense of a fullness of life. Jesus said that he came that we might have life and life more abundantly, and that begins in this realm, not again just money or something, but the abundance of joy, the abundance of relationship with you, Lord God. You are a wonderful and mighty God, our stronghold. I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised, so shall I be saved from my enemies. You alone are worthy of praise because you, Almighty God, alone are good. When Jesus was confronted by the ruler who said, good teacher, how must I inherit eternal life, and he somewhat facetiously said, why do you call me good, there is no one good but God. Of course, Jesus, being the Son, the eternal Son incarnate, is good. And so these words that he spoke were something of a bit of a joke, Lord God, to this man who even inadvertently acknowledged that Jesus is good. So you, Lord God, you are worthy to be praised, and it is in you that we are saved from our enemies. Lord, make this day for us today a day of joy, that we are reminded of our strength in you, that we are reminded of our protection in you, that we are reminded of our stronghold, our fortress, our covering of our Lord God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. So bless us this day, I pray. Walk with us and keep us in your will, I ask. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.