Thursday, May 5, 2022
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 23:6
Surely His Promises Are For You
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life…Surely that wasn’t meant for me.
David wrote Psalm 23 when he was older, looking back on his life. If you have read anything at all about David, you must have read about his many failures as well as his victories. Yes, he was the boy who killed Goliath. Yes, he was the shepherd boy who became a king. Yes, he was a man after God’s own heart. But he was also the man who took another man’s wife, Bathsheba, while he was off fighting a war. He was also the man that had her husband killed. He was also the man who ignored the rape of his daughter by her brother, his own son. How do you get past these kinds of failures in life and be able to testify that you surely know God’s goodness and mercy has and will follow you all the days of your life?
The answer is that David believed something that we sometimes have a hard time believing. He knew that he was forgiven, set free, and redeemed. When he looked back at his life, David didn’t see his sin. He saw the goodness of God, over and over again in his life. He didn’t see the shame, the guilt, and the failures. Every wrong thing in his past was covered by the goodness and mercy of God. He knew that he had lived in the goodness of God, and there was more to come. When we ask for forgiveness, God forgives us. And when He looks back on our lives, He doesn’t see the sin that He has forgiven. He doesn’t want us to live in that bondage. He freed us so He wants us to live free in His goodness. David believed God’s promises. He had experienced His promises fulfilled in his own life and, even in the face of death, he never stopped believing that God was true to every promise He makes.
Sometimes we have so much guilt and shame about the choices and decisions we have made in life that we believe that it is not possible for God to have good things planned for us. We don’t believe that His promises are for us.
Surely God wants nothing to do with me. Surely He is so disappointed in all my failures that He is given up on me. Surely He sees my continuous failed efforts to get myself together – only to have to continuously start over, sometimes from 3 steps back. Surely He can’t forgive me. Surely He doesn’t want me for His daughter. Surely He would never pursue my heart or chase after me to have a relationship with Him. Surely He is not jealous for me. Surely I don’t deserve His love, mercy, and goodness.
The lies of Satan will keep you from believing what David believed – that you are redeemed, and that God plans for goodness and mercy for you all the days of your life. The lens of shame and guilt cannot see the goodness of God in your life. His promises are for you.
Satan wants nothing more than for us to believe that your you are too broken to be blessed by God. And God wants nothing more than for us to know the power of His love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and redemption. God is a God of restoration. He is all about fixing the broken parts of our lives and redeeming them for His glory. That is His goal – redemption. It is not shame. It is not condemnation. It is not defeat. It is not to withhold His goodness and His promises from us. It is redemption, made complete in Him. He is for us, and He wants to bless us. We cannot let the lies of Satan drown out the victory we can have personally and that our families can have in Him. You are not too far gone. No one is ever out of His reach and there is no place that His love and mercy, grace, blessings, and fulfilled promises cannot find us.
