“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's."
Psalm 103:1-5 ESV
Every moment in our life is both an ending and a beginning. It is the end of your past and the beginning of your future. If you see your life in a God-centered way like the writers of scripture, you will be able to seize that moment and look through the lens of God and stand inside that world in great humility before Him.
Each moment is a moment where, through the lens of God, all of His works in the past are reasons for us to look back and be grateful. At the same time this moment points us to the future with an opportunity to look ahead with faith in God’s future grace. I really believe that if we learn to “be here now”, to “seize the moment”, and “to be still and know that He is God” that looking back and looking ahead are two great God given means of spiritual growth in our lives.
The Psalmist exhorts himself to look back and to remember what God has done for him in verse 1, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” How often do we forget all of God’s benefits, workings, blessings, providence's, deliverance's, provisions, protections, forgiveness, mercies, kindnesses, and miracles that the Lord has done in our lives? How often because we have forgotten all of His past mercies do we face the present with fear, doubt, anxiety, and unbelief?
When I look back at my own life I see that I have often failed to remember the big things that God has done and made them seem small in my forgetfulness while making the little thing that I faced in my present seem large in my unbelief.
I find it very helpful to see that the Psalmist is preaching to himself to remember all the preciousness of past grace that God has given Him. God in the past had “forgiven all of his iniquity, healed all his diseases, redeemed his life from the pit, crowned him with steadfast love and mercy, and satisfied him with good so that his youth was renewed like the eagle's.”
Preaching to ourselves is very important.
In his book Spiritual Depression Martin Lloyd Jones says,
I say that we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing 'ourselves' to talk to us! Do you realize what that means? I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you.
This is what the Psalmist does to counter this. Instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. So he stands up and says: 'Self, listen for a moment, I have something to say to you: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.”
Jones says,
The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself.
So we must learn to speak to ourselves and exhort ourselves: ‘Self, remember what God has done for you. The same God who has done for you in the past will work for you in the future, so bless the Lord, and all that is within me, bless His Holy Name!”
That is exactly what we must do. Jones asks, "Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?"
Let me ask you: Have you realized? Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to this reality, this fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? See, what we have each day is an internal conversation that never ends. It is ceaseless. It continues always within us. And so each day, throughout the day, we have two simple choices: We can either spend the day listening to ourselves, listening to ourselves in our constantly changing feelings and circumstantial interpretations, or we can spend each day talking to ourselves. We can talk truth to ourselves. We can seize each ending to be a moment for gratitude and each beginning to be a moment for faith.
Other characters in the bible did this. Joseph looking back on the past providence of God spoke to his brothers: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20). The Proverb writer looked forward on the future providence of God: "The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps" (Proverbs 16:9). David could look ahead and say, "Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life" (Psalm 23:6).
Gratitude causes us to see God’s past grace aimed at helping us. When we remember what God has done we can transfer that past working into present faith for God’s future promises aimed at helping us as well. Since every moment is the beginning of the rest of your life, and every moment is the end of the past, every moment should be governed by gratitude and faith. If you see the world in this biblical way - and if you stand inside that biblical world and preach this past grace and future grace to yourself - then every moment will be a point of gratitude toward the past and faith toward the future.
The practical implications of this are great. It will make you humble and bold! Humble, in feeling the preciousness of past grace and an honest memory of mercy; humbly remembering that “every good gift comes from above”; living in deep, dependent, gratitude and worship; knowing that it is the Lord who provided, sustained, protected, healed, delivered, and intervened in the past.
It will also awaken boldness by transferring the benefits of your God governed past into your future! At this moment are you confidently looking ahead to this God continuing to work, bless, provide, deliver, protect, forgive, show mercy, and work miracles in the future? Do you trust His rock solid promises for your future? Oh that we would agree with George Mueller that “The living God has been, is, and will always be the living God!”
At this moment your past and your future are meeting together. May you look back this day with the look of gratitude and may you look continually forward with the look of faith! Remember: Endings are for gratitude and Beginnings are for faith!
Pastor Bill
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