Psalm 25 is one of David's prayer of faith. A prayer in which David expresses his supreme trust in God even in the mist of trials and suffering and the guilt of sin. In this way, David shows us a faith that sustains all of life.
David is fearful of enemies, lonely in afflictions, he feels guilt and shame over his sin. He asks God to forget his sins and to remember mercy and steadfast love. He asks God to guide him and teach him. Above all, David asks that God will draw him near.
Jesus said, I am the vine and you are the branches. We are branches, but not natural branches. We are wild branches grafted in. How did that happen? How were we grafted in to Christ? only by being cut off from the world. And how does God cut us off from the world, by trials and suffering. And once we are grafted in, the pruning begins and every area of life that would keep us from God is pruned by trials and suffering.
God is the potter, we are the clay. The clay must be beat and pulled and shaped and fired in the kiln before it is transformed into something beautiful and useful. This is a picture of how God works through suffering in our lives.
Richard Sibbs Suffering enlarges the heart by creating the power to sympathize. If we pray eagerly for ourselves, we shall not long be able to forget our fellow sufferers. None pity the poor like those who have been or are still poor, none have such tenderness for the sick as those who have been long in ill health themselves. We ought to be grateful for occasional griefs if they preserve us from chronic hardheartedness; for of all afflictions, an unkind heart is the worst, it is a plague to its possessor, and a torment to those around him.
SERMON ACTIVITY
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I am thankful for the privilege of being able to help care for the souls of God's people wherever they may be. Even being a very small part of applying the healing balm of the gospel to a lost world is a blessing beyond imagining.
Being married to my wife, Pam, for 42 years, we...
