Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

Psalm 98:7-9
Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise! Let the earth and all living things
join in. Let the rivers clap their hands in glee! Let the hills sing out their songs of joy
before the LORD, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with
justice, and the nations with fairness.
When we think about praising God, we naturally think of people joining together in
chapels, churches and cathedrals around the world every Sunday. It’s inspiring to think
of millions of people every week sharing in acts of worship. However, the psalmist
doesn’t want us to think that this is the sum total of worship, because he sees the whole
of creation involved in praising God. Nothing is left out! Even the sea joins in praising
God. The rivers clap their hands in glee! It is beautiful poetic language because he is
straining to remind us that absolutely everything is bound to be part of the chorus of
praise because God is so great. He wants to blast open every attempt that we make to
limit the scale and importance of worship.
In our praise, we often think about his greatness as creator and saviour. Here, the
psalmist instead declares that this great outburst of praise to God happens because he
is coming to be the world’s judge, and we can be certain that he will do his judging work
with justice and fairness. There is a very deep craving in all of us for justice. It is always
painful to see unfairness in the world. You don’t have to spend long reflecting on the life
chances of children brought up in poverty, those who have been forced to flee their
homeland or those who have been born in a war zone, to realise that we live in a world
where justice and fairness are a distant dream for many people.
When we join with creation in praising God we are worshipping a God who loves justice,
so it is with excitement that we sing our hymns and songs. We acknowledge that he
alone is the one who can set our world free. As we worship him, we are being actively
recruited by the living God to work for the justice and fairness that he loves so much.
Question
In what ways is God calling you to work for justice in your community?
Prayer
Lord God, I am happy that I join with all creation in singing your praises. I thank you that
you are a God of justice and ask you to show me how I can live justly today. Amen

Psalm 98:1
Sing a new song to the LORD, for he has done wonderful deeds.
His right hand has won a mighty victory; his holy arm has shown his saving power!
I love the fact that God’s people through thousands of years have enjoyed singing. The psalmist had a very clear reason for encouraging people to sing: God’s salvation. Throughout his dealings with his people, he had shown them his ability to save, supremely when he led them out of slavery in Egypt. After 400 years in that land, God set them free in the most dramatic way.
Nothing has changed. Salvation should spur us into singing today. Salvation never changes because God has always been in the business of setting people free from sin, guilt and lifelessness, but the way in which that salvation is experienced will be unique for every individual. I love hearing the testimonies of other Christians, and what always strikes me is that each is a one-off. God comes to us as individuals and meets us in the specific context of our lives, so there is endless variety to the ways in which we encounter him. As a consequence, we always need to be looking for new songs to sing to the Lord. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the old songs, but the creativity of God’s Spirit encourages every generation to look for new ways of addressing their praise to God.
The ways in which churches sing to God these days varies enormously. There are some churches that only ever sing hymns led by an organ, and others that only ever sing songs that have been written during the last few years to the accompaniment of a band. We should embrace and enjoy every form of worship because the different styles of hymns and songs reflect the rich diversity of the Church and remind us of the need for every kind of person to celebrate the salvation which God generously offers to us.
Question
How important is singing in your Christian life?
Prayer
Lord God, I thank you that you have given me something to sing about. I praise you for your gift of salvation to me. Amen

Psalm 97:10
You who love the LORD, hate evil! He protects the lives of his godly people and rescues them from the power of the wicked.
One of the signs that we truly love God is that we start to hate evil, and this is critically important because the many great evils in the world will never come to an end unless people begin hating them. The Transatlantic Slave Trade only stopped when people identified its horror and started hating it. I once visited the ancient fort at Cape Coast in Ghana where slaves were held before being ferried to the slave ships off the coast. For me, the most horrific discovery was that the dungeon in which the slaves were brutally stored was underneath the chapel. As the slave traders worshipped God, they must have heard the cries of the slaves. For centuries, people lived with the slave trade as an acceptable, if regrettable, part of life. It was only when people started to hate it and fight against it that the tide turned and finally, albeit very slowly, it was dismantled.
There is plenty in our own world which deserves our hatred. We need to hate poverty, which occurs in every part of the world. Poverty distorts and cheapens life. It places enormous pressure on relationships and health and often leads to depression and violence. There is nothing good about it, but we live alongside it with surprising ease. In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we all live close to poor people. This psalm suggests to me that as we love God more and more, he wants our hatred of poverty to increase, because then we will start taking initiatives to help to eradicate it and to support those who are poor. It’s so easy to respond to poverty by blaming others. The government would be a popular target, and so would the poor themselves, but this is a cheap way of trying to evade our responsibilities. The government cannot do everything and although some poor people may well bear a degree of responsibility for their poverty, we have also played our part in keeping them poor.
True worship of the living God must lead us to action.
Question
How much do you hate poverty in your own community and what are you doing as a result of your hatred?
Prayer
Loving Father, help me to love you so much that I start hating evil in the same way as you do. Amen

2 Corinthians 13:14
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
As Paul concludes this tough letter in which he has responded to fierce criticism of his ministry, he ends by blessing the church in Corinth. These beautiful words are repeated millions of times every year as Christians meet together because they are the strongest words of blessing that could be imagined. They summarise the majestic work of the Trinity.
Jesus’ life and ministry are wonderfully summed up in the word grace. Grace means gift, and his life and death were God’s perfect gift to the world. In a world in which there is often brokenness, sadness and a distinct lack of grace, it is wonderful to be able to pray for people to experience the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, which brings healing, forgiveness and restoration.
Many things could be said of God the Father, the creator of the world. He is all powerful and all-knowing and no word of praise and adoration is too great to express his majesty. However, if you had to choose just one word to describe him, you would have to choose love, for God is love.
The Holy Spirit was God’s gracious gift to the Church when Jesus returned to his Father’s right hand in heaven. He lives with us, and every day he offers to have fellowship with us and to lead us into all truth. Jesus said that it was to his disciples’ advantage that he went away so that the Holy Spirit could be sent to them. In his earthly life, Jesus couldn’t be with everyone all the time, but the Holy Spirit can, so we gladly bless one another with the encouragement that his fellowship is constantly with us.
We should never repeat these words of blessing quickly or thoughtlessly. They take us to the heart of our great Triune God.
Question
In what way is this blessing special to you?
Prayer
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all today. Amen

2 Corinthians 12:9-10
[The Lord] said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
The apostle Paul revealed that he had suffered a thorn in the flesh. He didn’t give any hint of what kind of thorn this was, so there have been endless suggestions over the centuries. It may well have been a physical difficulty, and it has often been suggested that he had a speech impediment. This would account for him being described as a poor preacher. It might well have been a mental or spiritual difficulty instead. We just don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter. What matters is the spiritual lesson that it taught him, namely that God finds it easiest to work in us through our weakness rather than our strength.
A strong person is tempted to think that they can do everything by themselves – that they have no need for God. The person who is weak, on the other hand, knows their limitations. They are eager to find support from others and gladly welcome God’s strength. Paul was fiercely criticised for the weakness of his public ministry. As a minister, I wince at the sharpness of their criticisms, and it is clear that they wounded Paul deeply. He had established the church in Corinth, so it was incredibly precious to him, and the barrage of criticisms must have been especially hard to bear. His answer to his critics, however, was that all the problems that he had faced had actually been a blessing because they had taught him to rely completely on God.
All of us will face challenging times in the future, even if life is easy and straightforward at the moment. Praise God that in those days of greatest weakness we will discover more and more of his strength.
Question
When have you experienced God’s strength in times of weakness?
Prayer
Lord God, I thank you that I can look to the future with confidence because you will always fill me with the strength that I need to face any challenge. Amen