A Psalm/Prayer

Series on “I am Joe’s Favorite Verses”: Psalm 139:23-24
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Psalm 139:1-24

[Many years ago, there used to be articles in the Reader’s Digest titled “I am Joe’s ___” with the blank being filled with a body part or organ. Over the years, I’ve written down verses that are meaningful to me on 3x5 cards. In this series we’ll be looking at some of my favorite verses. In other words, “I am Joe’s Favorite Verses”.]

  

Have you ever noticed how someone who is really close to you knows what you’re going to say before you say it? After fifty-two years of marriage, my wife does that with me. In fact, on occasion, she will finish my sentences before I’m even done.

 

God is like that with us. He is all-knowing – omniscience is the theological word for it. David put it in a much more personal and practical way in his psalm/prayer.

 

² You know when I sit down or stand up.
    You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
⁴ You know what I am going to say
    even before I say it, Lord.         NLT

 

Because we are all sinners, to be fully known by someone, and still having them love you is staggering. David, for instance, had some glaring skeletons in his closet – an affair with Bathsheba and then having her husband, Uriah, killed. Yet, the Lord loved David. In fact, the bloodline of Jesus ran through him.

 

David also wrote in his psalm/prayer how God’s Spirit was with him everywhere he went. The theological word for this is omnipresence. But again, David framed it in a much more personal and poetic way.

 

⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.      NIV

 

The impact of this was that David realized even in the darkness of his sin, the Lord was there. Not only was the Lord there, but he was at work in his life, using his trials and temptations and failures to grow in his faith.

 

Finally, David wrote about the all-sovereign God – or how God is omnipotent. In doing so, David defined himself not by his failures or successes, but by the truth of being created by the Living God.

 

¹³ You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
    and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
    Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.    NLT

 

As David meditated and wrote about who God was and how God worked in his life, he concluded his psalm/prayer where he started – a desire to follow the Lord and obey him in all that he did.

 

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ Point out anything in me that offends you,
    and lead me along the path of everlasting life.       NLT

 

This is a psalm/prayer worth repeating every day of my life.

 

Copyright 2026 Joseph B Williams

Feel free to share this blog with others.

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

 

 

Now You’re Cooking with Gas

A Series on the Psalms – a collection of prayers
Feeling overwhelmed
 (Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Psalm 61 

[Life is filled with emotions. The book of Psalms is a collection of prayers that express our emotions which are the cry of our soul for help and hope. In this series, we will be looking into the Psalms to learn more about ourselves and our Lord.]

  

During high school, I was pretty self-disciplined about doing my homework. Every night I would sit at the dining room table and complete my assignments.

 

However, there were times when I wasn’t able to solve a problem and would get frustrated. My anger would build until I would ask my Dad for help, hoping that he would just give me the answer. But he never did.

 

He always guided me along and helped me to figure it out on my own. When the light bulb finally came on for me, he would say, “Now you’re cooking with gas”. His words, given with love and encouragement, brought both comfort and confidence to me. In the same way that I asked my Dad for help, David asked the Lord.

 

David was the king of Israel, the leader of the land. And as the saying goes – it’s lonely at the top. Whatever his specific circumstances were when he wrote this psalm, David was feeling overwhelmed and at the end of his rope.

 

¹ O God, listen to my cry!
    Hear my prayer!
^2a From the ends of the earth,
    I cry to you for help
    when my heart is overwhelmed.          NLT

 

He desired to get away from it all. To escape reality because, to be honest, he was tired of dealing with the problems. There was no light at the end of the tunnel.

 

⁴ I long to dwell in your tent forever
    and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.           NIV

 

He felt a need for a newfound security, so he called on the Lord.

 

^2b Lead me to the towering rock of safety, ³ for you are my safe refuge, a fortress where my enemies cannot reach me.        NLT

 

Finally, David found his source of comfort and confidence in his relationship with the Lord. As he prayed, it was in the third person. Not only did he pray for himself, but also for the fulfillment of the Lord’s covenant which was ultimately completed through Christ.

 

⁶ Add many years to the king's life;
    let him live on and on!
⁷ May he rule forever in your presence, O God;
    protect him with your constant love and faithfulness.       GNT

 

Like David, there are times when we feel overwhelmed; a desire to escape; the need for a newfound security. During those times, turn to the Lord and call out to him. 

And when you do, listen for his response of love and encouragement as he tells you, “Now you’re cooking with gas”.

 

Copyright 2024 Joseph B Williams

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

 

 

 

Straight Line Story

A series on the story of redemption
The story of David
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
2 Samuel 7:1-17 

[Everybody has a story. Even God has one. His is a story about love and redemption and faithfulness. In this series we are going to take a closer look at God’s story through the lives of the people that He touched. How their story became His story of redemption. And how your story is also a part of it.]

  

A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. However, if you Google “how to determine the shortest distance between two points”, it gives you this formula:

 

1. Denote the given points as (x₁, y₁) and (x₂, y₂).
2. Apply the Euclidean distance formula, distance, d = √[(x₂ − x₁)² + (y₂ − y₁)²]
3. Simplify the square root.

 

Are you kidding me? All you have to do is take a ruler, connect the two points and draw a straight line. Voila! Easy peasy. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure it out. But, as Lee Corso from ESPN College GameDay says, “Not so fast my friend”.

 

Apparently, the Lord wasn’t a mathematician because he didn’t know how to connect a straight line when it came to his story of redemption. Consider David. But first, to understand his story, we begin with Saul.

 

Rejecting the Lord as their king, the Israelites asked Samuel for a human king like all the other nations around them. The Lord instructed Samuel to anoint Saul as king. He was a man of good standing and was a head taller than anyone else. When he was anointed, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul, and he was a changed man.

 

Saul ruled as king for forty-two years and started his reign well. He obeyed the Lord and was victorious in battle. 

But slowly, cracks appeared in his character. Eventually, the Lord rejected Saul as king and instructed Samuel to go to Jesse of Bethlehem; that he had chosen one of his sons to be king.

 

Now Jesse had eight sons and brought them out to Samuel one at a time starting with the oldest. One by one, the Lord told Samuel “No”, it wasn’t him. Finally, the youngest came out, David. He had been tending the sheep and was an afterthought. But he was the one that the Lord had chosen.

 

In secret, Samuel anointed David as king. Following this, the Lord’s Spirit came upon David. But it also left Saul, and was replaced by an evil spirit that tormented him. To relieve Saul of his torment, David was brought to play the lyre. Can you imagine the irony of this and the anxiety of David?

 

Eventually, when David defeated Goliath in battle, he became a war hero. As a result, Saul was extremely jealous of David, and tried to kill him. Because of this, David became a fugitive, running for his life.

 

This is anything but a straight line story. Did the Lord make multiple mistakes? Did he choose the wrong man to be king? Did he know what he was doing; what the ramifications would be? Did he truly have a long term plan in mind? It doesn’t seem like it.

 

Yet, when David finally replaced Saul as king and possessed the throne, the Lord made this covenant with him.

 

¹⁶ Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’”          NIV

 

This covenant was fulfilled twenty-eight generations later.

 

¹ This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham…               NIV    Matthew 1

 

The Lord’s plan of redemption is not a straight line story. It’s not easy peasy. But he does have a plan and that plan includes you and me. It may not be a straight line, but it’s His plan, and we are a part of his story.

 

Copyright 2023 Joseph B Williams

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

A Series on Living in the Wilderness
 (Click on the link below to read the verses.)
2 Samuel 11:1-5; Psalm 32:1-11

 [In this series, we will be looking at people in the Bible who lived in the wilderness. Not necessarily a wilderness of natural creation, but the metaphorical wilderness of life. In fact, there are times when we all feel like we are living in the wilderness. During those times, it’s important to remember that the Lord is always with you.]

  

Regrets! We all have them. Sometimes they’re small, like when I sold my vintage record
collection for pennies on the dollar; or when I threw away my 1974-76 collection of Michigan State football programs that I had saved for 30 years. Man I wish I wouldn’t have done that! I still regret it!

 

Some regrets though, are more serious. Like acting out on an addiction which results in hurting those you love the most, as well as yourself. You wish you could take it back, but it’s in the past, and you can’t change the past. Not only can you not change it, but the consequences can be life changing.

 

Regrets lead to guilt and shame. They can eat you up on the inside leading into more self-destructive behavior. Regrets can stay with you for years, if not for the rest of your life. David was intimately familiar with regrets.

 

He had an adulterous affair with Bathsheba. Then, to make matters worse, he had her husband Uriah, killed in battle. Even though David recognized his sin and confessed it, there were life changing consequences.

 

The son that David and Bathsheba conceived together… died; David’s son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar; in retaliation, Absalom, who was Tamar’s brother, killed Amnon; eventually Absalom conspired to overthrow David. On and on it went like ripples in the water. David lived in a wilderness of his own creation.

 

Here’s what David wrote about living in the wilderness, and how the Lord healed him.

 

³ When I kept it all inside,
    my bones turned to powder,
    my words became daylong groans.

⁴ The pressure never let up;
    all the juices of my life dried up.

⁵ Then I let it all out;
    I said, “I’ll come clean about my failures to God.”

Suddenly the pressure was gone—
    my guilt dissolved,
    my sin disappeared.        MSG

 

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. We all feel that way sometimes; like we’re living in a wilderness of our own making. Thankfully, the Lord forgives; the Lord heals; the Lord makes us whole again.

 

Copyright 2021 Joseph B Williams

 

 

 

Only Go Forward

A Series on Living in the Wilderness
 (Click on the link below to read the verses.)
1 Samuel 17:32-51

 [In this series, we will be looking at people in the Bible who lived in the wilderness. Not necessarily a wilderness of natural creation, but the metaphorical wilderness of life. In fact, there are times when we all feel like we are living in the wilderness. During those times, it’s important to remember that the Lord is always with you.]

  

This blog was posted on Saturday, September 11, 2021; twenty years to the day when nearly 3000 people died in the World Trade Center. My wife and I watched a six part series on the National Geographic channel documenting many of the stories of that day. One of the stories was about a marine by the name of Jason Thomas.

 

He was dropping his daughter off at the home of his mother on Long Island when she told him planes had struck the towers. Having left active duty in August 2001, Thomas quickly put on his Marine uniform, sped to Manhattan, and parked his car just as the North Tower collapsed.

 

When he arrived at Ground Zero he didn’t have a plan, but soon ran into another Marine veteran. Together, they decided to look for survivors. While walking on the rubble, firemen called out to them to come back because it was too dangerous. Thomas responded by saying, “We are U.S. Marines. We never go back. We only go forward”! As a result, they saved the lives of several people that day.

 

Jason Thomas was not looking to become a hero. He only responded to the situation and the calling he believed he had as a Marine. In the same way, David responded when Samuel visited his father Jesse to anoint David as King of Israel.

 

David never asked to be a hero when he volunteered to fight Goliath. He never asked to be the soothing musician that calmed King Saul’s tormented soul. He never asked to be the anointed King of Israel.  And he definitely never asked to be hunted down like an animal, while living in the wilderness, with the most powerful man in Israel trying to run a spear through him.

 

David never asked for any of these things, but he embraced them with the faith of a man after God’s own heart. And because of that, he was able to endure the wilderness. The wilderness where he ran for his life; he hid in caves; he pretended to be insane; and he prayed to the Lord for deliverance.

 

Sometime you may find yourself wandering in the wilderness. When that happens, be ready to respond by going forward with confidence like David did when he faced Goliath.

 

⁴⁵ David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied… ⁴⁷ All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”       NIV

 

Be ready to respond to the needs of people; to the Spirit of God; to God’s calling.

 

Copyright 2021 Joseph B Williams

 

 

 

The Rings of a Tree

 Continuing a Series on “Living by Faith”
 (Use the link below to read the verses.)
2 Samuel 7:1-29; Hebrews 11:32-34

[Hebrews 11 is a recounting of the Heroes of the Faith. Each person is commended for living “by faith”. Following these commendations we read, “Therefore, because you are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses… throw off sin; run with perseverance; fix your eyes on Jesus”. In other words, continue to live “by faith”.]

  

You’ve probably heard before that the rings of a tree can tell you how old it is. But, did you know that you could also learn the history of a tree’s life? According to International Paper, you can actually learn the following from the rings of a tree:

A tree that’s happy, getting lots of sunshine and rain, will show rings that are relatively broad, and evenly spaced.

A tree’s rings that appear wider on one side than the other may indicate that something pushed against the tree as it was growing. The tree will build “reaction wood” to help support the side that’s leaning.

A fire in the forest can be easily seen by scarring on the tree’s bark. Year by year, the tree will create more and more wood to cover the scar, but it’s there to see in the tree’s history.

Reading this makes me wonder if we as humans, don’t have something similar to “rings of a tree” within us. Something that shows the scars or happiness or stress of life.

 

David experienced all of these starting as an outcast shepherd boy; defeating Goliath; running from Saul; being anointed king of Israel; defeating Israel’s enemies; sleeping with Bathsheba; and then, having her husband killed. David’s life was all over the map, both good and bad. No doubt he had some “interesting” rings.

 

In 2 Samuel 7, there’s an amazing promise to David from the Lord.

 

“‘The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you… ¹⁶ Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’”          NIV

 

The Lord had a plan for David’s life. And not only for him, but his children, and his children’s children and their children; eventually crossing over the millennia to Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

 

The Lord also has a plan for you, and for me. One day at a time; one year at a time; one experience at a time; from generation to generation; the “rings of the tree” can be seen. Let us pray like David to our Sovereign Lord.

 

²⁰ What more can I say to you! You know me, your servant. ²¹ It was your will and purpose to do this; you have done all these great things in order to instruct me. ²² How great you are, Sovereign Lord! There is none like you; we have always known that you alone are God.          GNT

 

I Want My Mommy!!!

A Series from the Psalms on “Disappointment with God”

Psalm 22

(Use the link below to read the verses.)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2022&version=NIV;TPT

 

In the summer of 1998, I was returning home from a business trip driving through Kentucky at night; all alone on the highway. My Mom had died earlier that year, and I was deep in my thoughts about her; feeling sad, alone, even abandoned. This was a totally irrational feeling of course; but it was real.

 

In the midst of those feelings I cried out, “I want my Mommy”!!! It was as if I was five instead of almost fifty. Feelings of being abandoned by the person whose love you need the most; whose love you could always count on; can make a grown man cry.

 

David knew that feeling very well when he wrote:

¹ God, my God! Why would you abandon me now?
² Why do you remain distant, refusing to answer my tearful cries in the day
and my desperate cries for your help in the night?
I can’t stop sobbing. Where are you, my God?              TPT

We don’t know the specific circumstances that prompted David to write this. However, we do know that there were times when he was running for his life from King Saul. And while he was hiding in caves, and whatever other isolated locations that he could find, it’s easy to imagine that he may have felt abandoned by God.

 

The good news is that David gives us a model that we can follow when feeling abandoned by God. It isn’t the only model; it may not even be the best one. But it gives us some steps to follow.

 

First, David didn’t bury his feelings or deny them. He cried out to God; maybe even yelled at Him. David also remembered what God had done in the past, both in Israel and his life. Finally, he prayed. He asked God to intervene.

 

Jesus knew what it was like to feel abandoned too. While hanging on the cross, as his closest friends turned their back on him, he cried out in pain and agony the same words that David wrote.

 

He went to the cross for us. Not so that we would never FEEL abandoned; but so that we would never BE abandoned.