Psalm 37

3 things to take home from this psalm. 1) Delight in the Lord and He will delight in you. How do u feel when you are delighted? Happy, joyful, pleasant? We all know how it feels to be delight and take delight in someone, to take pleasure and joy with being with him/her. We would want to be with people we take delight in and these people are usually people we know well. So do you take delight in God, to want to be in His presence and get to know Him well? God wants to take delight in us! When we follow, obey and trust Him, He is delighted and will watch over and direct us.

2) Commit everything into His hands. This means we entrust everything to His control and guidance, trust in Him and be patient as He works out everything in our lives. In verse 8-9, God tells us not to be angry nor to fret/worry, because these feelings are very destructive. They arise when we dont have faith in Him, not committing everything into His hands.

When we focus on our problems, we often become angry or anxious. Why cant things happen the way we plan? Why cant the people understand us or be coorperative? What will be the result of all these things i have done? However, if we focus on how BIG God is and to focus on His love for us, assuring us that He WILL be with us, we can have peace.

3) Remember the poor. In verse 25, God reminds us that the righteous will not be forsaken. It means that God will always provide for us. But God also means that we need to remember and not forsaken His people, the poor. We often see the poor in our midst, maybe poor in finance, health, emotional, even spiritual. What are our response to these? They deserve what they are facing. Or this is a test for them, to be patient and trust in God. He will deliver them. Or, i will help. When we remember the poor, we must also remember, God's focus is us too.

Psalm 38

This psalm seems to be about sins and there are again three things about sins for us to recognise.

1) Sin can leads to health problem. Sure anot? If i lie, steal, disobey God, how can these affect my health? Looking at verse 1-8, david seems to be having some health problem. Not enough, read Acts 12:21-23, 1 Cor 11:30-32... When we sin, our health or physical condition can be affected. Which may be why some people suffer from many sicknesses, we also see many times when God stuck the people with diseases and plagues. But God causes this, not because He is a tyrant, or like want retribution, He doesnt. He just want to bring us back to repentance, back to Him (Heb 12:5-11)

2) Sin can affect our emotional lives. verse 9-14 Sin leads to separation between God and man. We may not be able to "feel" or experience God, cant seem to be able to talk to Him. Not only that, our relationships with other people will also be affected. I always remember one of the pastors said that how your spiritual life is, will affect your physical life. If your relationship with God is not too good, all other relationships will be affected. How? I'm not too sure. maybe maybe when you cannot relate well with God and find your security in Him, you become shaky when with man. But i have definitely experienced that before. Doesnt feel good...

3) Sin has to be brought before God and repented from. Verse 15-22. We saw that david turned back to God, to confess his sins. Similiarly, the only way to be free from the physical suffering, and emotional loneliness, is to come to God and ask Him for mercy.