Instead of just one verse to start our week, I just could not separate these lovely verses of Psalm 63.  They are certainly like a poem and a song.  Verses 3 and 4 are sung in a popular chorus even today.  Read the verses again before we start, and get a feel of their real beauty in praise to the Lord.  Psalm 63 was written when David was in the wilderness of Judah, but he definitely was not in a wilderness of soul!  No, his soul was filled with love to the Lord, enriched with thoughts of his God.  In the midst of trials, David thought of praise to God.  What a convicting lesson for us!  Let’s quickly look at the words and think of their messages to our hearts.  What a high value we place on life, and so it should be.  But that value must be in the right priority.  Verse 3 proclaims that God’s loving-kindness is better than life, and asks us the question: is that your priority?  Have you experienced the deep lovingkindness of the Lord and let your heart become so filled with awe and thanksgiving that it is better than this temporal life to you?  There are people who would do anything to prolong their lives.  Sadly, there are those that are spending thousands of dollars on quack cures and even chemically freezing their bodies in the hopes of retaining physical life.  What a calm joy to be able to have placed our life in the eternal care of God, who alone can preserve it.  His lovingkindness is better than life.  He will, in His love and kindness, give us the fullness of eternal life at salvation and complete the transaction in Heaven when we are given glorified bodies.  Life on earth is just a passing thing, but the love of God will last throughout time and eternity.  No wonder David could say, my lips shall praise thee, and so should our lips praise the Lord.  In this temporal life, we have a priority of responsibility to God that must never be forgotten.  Verse 4 tells us of this priority: thus will I bless thee while I live...  Throughout my Christian life, I have noticed it is many times easier to work for the Lord than to deeply bless Him.  The devil is not as interested in our feeble works as he is with the deep attitudes of our hearts.  If he can rob us of our joy and devotion of praise and gratitude to the Lord, he has defeated us and our works.  We need to have the full heartfelt devotion of David, who determined that he would continually bless the Lord, with total commitment and abandon, with complete devotion to the glory of God’s name and person.  It is so easy to pray for the things and people we have on our mind, but to give ourselves in prayer to blessing God for who He is and praying to Him just because we love and adore Him, takes real spiritual labor and growth.  Today begin to make blessing the Lord in your prayers a habit of your daily devotions.  Our prayers are not the only way to bless the Lord, we must do so in every area of our lives, service and witness.  I knew a young woman years ago who determined to spend a certain time every day praising the Lord in her home.  There was a real emergency with one of my children and I called her for help.  She refused to come, citing that she was in the midst of her praise time.  Hers had to be a private blessing of God, she said.  Sadly, her testimony to me was damaged, but I also learned a great lesson that was to be of convicting help to me in mission service later: part of blessing the Lord is how we live His love to others.  As a newly saved Christian, I learned this phrase: "You are the best Christian some people know."  That makes how we live our lives of utmost importance.  On the mission field, I also realized that I could be the only Christian and representative of Christ some people would ever meet.  Oh, Lord, help me to live my life as a blessing to You before others.  I know I cannot do it in and of myself.  Verse 7 reminds us that because of the past faithfulness of the Lord, we should remember to presently trust in Him.  How quickly it seems some folks forget the goodness of the Lord.  We must guard our hearts to not do so.  Verse 8 could be our soul’s "life verse."  There is power of direction and devotion contained in the statement: My soul followeth hard after thee.  We should have such longing for the Lord, be so desirous of following after Him, that our soul would hunger for God.  Today, let us seek to implement praise, blessing and trust in our lives.  Let us follow hard after the Lord.  Oh, that we would never allow half-hearted Christianity to be our norm, but let us be whole-hearted, faithful and true.  May each of us be as close to the Lord as we can.  Lord, help us to work at living lives of praise to You!

Need a good testimony verse?  Here it is!  All of Psalm 66 is filled with praise to the Lord.  David appears to be speaking directly to the congregation of Israel as he extols the wondrous works and person of God.  He invites others to join with him in understanding the greatness of the Lord.  Verse five says, O come and see the works of God.  Verse eight declares, O bless our God, ye people.  Then, verse sixteen speaks loudly and clearly the intention of David to declare all the things that God has done for his soul.  The large star in my Bible next to this verse reminds me that it is a verse I asked God to help me personally claim.  So many times we are given the opportunity to give a testimony and we should want each time to be one of praising the Lord and telling what He has done.  In each opportunity that we have throughout life to speak for the Lord, we need to ask God’s grace to speak of the Lord.  How often have you heard a speaker tell of himself or use a long illustration, instead of using the opportunity to speak of the Lord.  Perhaps you have heard a testimony that was not really a testimony of the Lord’s workings.  We must be careful and committed.  We must use the opportunities given to us to speak about what God has done for us!  How truly humbling to consider that the Almighty God of the Universe is so intimately concerned with each one of us that He does great things for our souls.  We should praise His holy Name!  As I faced deputation travels as a missionary and knew that I would be given many opportunities to speak, I knew that I needed the admonition of this verse.  I certainly had many exciting and interesting stories that I could tell about ME, and MY life, but that was not what God wanted me to convey.  I was convicted that He had given me the opportunity to use in glorifying His name, to tell how He had personally entered my life and how He worked in and through that redeemed life.  I should not be telling just about ME but about HIM, not just about My life but about my life in HIS hands.  Oh, what great prayer I needed to even begin to fulfill that commission.  How often I am certain that I fell short of His perfect plan, but how awed I was to be able to feebly use the opportunities He provided, in prayerful hoping that others would understand the love and praise I felt toward my Savior.  What a privilege to be able to stand before many people, mostly of the household of faith, and tell what great things God had done for my soul.  How thankful I was for the many that came to hear.  My husband and I would pray that what we said would be of encouragement and challenge to others and that they would join with us in praise to our Lord.  At the close of some meetings, ladies, especially, would come to me and thank me for something I had shared because it had spoken to their hearts.  It was my prayer that it was not the words that I had spoken that had ministered, but the mention of the works of God, His ways with me, that had meant so much.  We are reminded in the New Testament that many of the things that happen to us are given so that we might be able to minister to others and hold them up in the faith.  Let each one of us use our God-given opportunities to declare to others what God has done for us!

In your mind’s eye can you see a picture of the lovely, graceful dove, her wings covered with purest silver and her body feathers with shining yellow gold?  What a creature of delicate beauty and loveliness.  God really speaks to our hearts with this picture.  He tells us that even if we have lain among the pots, we can be like that dove, a thing of beauty.  What can bring such a change?  It is only the working of the Holy Spirit upon a life.  Out of simple clay, God, the Master Potter, molded us and prepared us for His use.  Until we presented ourselves for His service by coming to Him in salvation, we were just lying in the heap of molded pots, waiting.  We were probably viewed only as common unglazed clay utensils.  But then, the Potter picked us up out of the miry clay and the commonness of that heap, and glazed us within and without, making us serviceable for His use.  He took that common clay pot, that was our life, and made it a thing of beauty.  He gently painted it with finest silver and brush strokes of gold.  We were no longer common, but vessels fit for the Master’s use.  We must never forget the great change that God has wrought in our lives.  So many people live defeated Christian lives because they only remember what they were before they were saved, and fail to consider what they have, and can, become.  Many times I have heard someone I was sharing the Gospel with say, "God wouldn’t want me, you don’t know what I have done.  How could God forgive me and take me to Heaven?"  Not only can God forgive anything, He can take anyone out of that heap of pots where they have lain and make them into a lovely silver and golden dove.  He can give them wings of flight to a higher life and higher plane.  Perhaps there should be such an ornament for every home, especially to share with our daughters.  How lovingly we could use it to teach: "Daughter, this is the picture of beauty and grace that God wants to paint in your life!  Nothing of the world could give to you such translucent beauty."  Even a dove, as lovely as it is in natural life, could never claim for herself this perfection of enhanced beauty.  The Master artist had to add the strokes of color and tint each feather with purest gold.  It is a thing of unnatural, extraordinary, unique beauty.  Did you notice the promise word, shall?  So many of us feel quite ordinary on earth.  We have feet of clay.  Our lives seem filled with common labor.  Our mirror reflects a rather ordinary visage.  But someday in Heaven, we shall be as princesses with God, arrayed in the perfect beauty of holiness.  What a joy to contemplate!  If you get discouraged today or "down on yourself," just remember YOU are that beautiful dove, glistening in the sunlight of God’s love, all covered with precious silver and gold, a creature of great beauty because of God’s grace.  Spread your wings and fly for God today!

David was in deep affliction and trials as he wrote this Psalm.  He said that the waters were come in unto his soul (verse 1), and he was standing in deep waters that were about to overflow him.  He was crying to God, "Save me!"  He was crying to God in the acceptable time.  Oh, let us not wait too long to cry out to the Lord.  Prayer is always available for the Christian.  We do not have to wait until Sunday, or when a priest is available, or until someone "more important" keeps their prayer appointment.  We can come anytime.  But so often we wait until the floods really overflow us and we are truly drowning.  We seem to see the waves of trouble coming, we may even think we can turn to face them on our own.  Sometimes, we try to venture out into them, just "testing the waters."  Still we think we can handle it, but then as we are about to sink, we call out to God.  I can remember as a teenager, loving to go to the beach and ride the waves in a sport we called "body surfing."  One day the waves were cresting just a little too high for my friends, but I decided to give it a try.  Despite the fact that I was a strong swimmer, when the first waves came upon me, I felt a terrible gripping force, a hidden "rip tide."  It was pulling me down and out, engulfing me in a struggle that was frightening.  I’m certain that it was only the grace of God that brought me to the shore that day, to receive a firm lecture from the life guard who rushed up and warned us of the dangers.  He had almost been five minutes too late for me.  I certainly wished that he had come to post the warning signs of rip tide on the beach at a more acceptable time!  God is faithful.  He always places the signs along our shore line of life, we have just to heed them.  When trouble comes, we need to use the acceptable time of calling, the earliest time, the most consistent time.  How wonderful, that even if we are neglectful, God is still there ready to answer, because His time is always acceptable for us!  He will always hear us in the multitude of His mercy and according to the truth of his salvation.  This verse in its context also reminds us of another truth.  David was citing the reactions of other people to his calamity.  He said that they behaved wrongfully, hatefully and in a high and "mighty" way.  They spoke against God’s man and mocked him in their drunken songs, they reproached him and tried to destroy him.  But as for me, said David, my prayer is unto thee.  When faced with difficulties of life, people can react many different ways.  We need to say with David, "But as for me, Lord, I will promise to call out to You in my distress.  I will vow to act in the way You have chosen for me and to make full use of Your available prayer-line at the acceptable time, that time when You first remind me to come quickly to You.  I know, Lord, that only in this way will I be prevented from acting in my own strength and be granted Your strength instead.  Thank You, Lord, for being always available for me, because of Your grace, mercy and truth."

This is a verse whose principles we should teach to our children from the time that they are very young.  We should apply the verse to our lives and ask the Lord to help us never to forget it ourselves.  I can remember my father telling me to always remember that I was a Houston (my maiden name), and to act in such a way as to bring honor upon the family name.  That is good advice for a father to give.  Our Heavenly Father is giving us the same advise when He reminds us to always act in such a way that will not bring reproach upon the family of God.  At no time should we consider our lives to be "an island unto ourselves."  What we do will always reflect on our spiritual family name, the name of Christian, the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  We need to remind ourselves, the next time we are tempted to act in an ungodly way, or in the ways of the world that seem convenient but contrary to the Word of God, to remember who we are representing, Whose name could be reproached.  It is the wonderful name of our gracious Savior.  We must never forget whose child we are!  We must also remember that second group that is implicated in our actions, our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Each time we publicly do something, we are representing every member of the family of God.  Christians sometimes forget that the mind set of others is often determined by our individual actions.  When we do something that sours the impression of a Christian to someone, they will project that image onto the next Christian they meet.  It will not make a difference if that Christian has never had a problem in the area we failed in, the association has been made.  Many times we meet someone who says, "I would never become a Christian, I met one once and if that is what a Christian is like I would rather not be one."  They may have been deceived by Satan, but often it is sadly true that someone failed to live up to the name Christian.  There is a third group that we represent in name and that is our local church.  The actions or words of just one person can damage the testimony of an entire church body.  Each time we do something in our community, even if it is not on official church business, we are doing it as a member of that church.  The testimony of the church is the testimony of Christ in our town.  The circle repeats itself, we are ambassadors for Christ.  Our responsibility is great.  Let us never forget whose family we belong to, and live in such a way that no one will have to be ashamed for our sakes.  We should make certain also that we will not be a stumbling block to those that seek [God].  The words we say, the actions we perform, should not cause others to be confounded or confused.  We should not tell our children to trust in God and then explode when things don’t go our way, it will confuse them.  We should not be a model Christian in church on Sunday in front of new believers and then be involved in questionable activities during the week, it will give ample ground for the devil to whisper doubts in their ears.  O Lord, help me to live in such a way that Your name will be glorified and that those that seek You can see Christ in me, the Hope of Glory.  Humble me, Lord, and help me to be ever mindful of the great responsibility You gave with the name Christian.

When we pray to the Lord, we can be assured that He will hear us and answer that prayer because of His lovingkindness and His tender mercies.  Not only is God the all powerful Creator of the Universe, the all-knowing Sustainer of Life, the One to be held in awe for His strength, but He is also compassionate and full of tenderness to His children.  All around the land of Israel were idol worshipers, who in fear called out to their powerless images.  But David knew the God of all power and could call out to Him in love and trust.  This same God is our God.  What a marvelous Lord we have and what a wonderful privilege it is to know Him personally.  When we are in trouble, God is ready to help.  When we are lonely, He is our Companion.  When we are hurt, He is the Great Physician.  When we are rejoicing, He is our Friend.  We do not just have a distant God, an abstract being, but a personal Savior.  Verse 17 carries the plea of David, I am in trouble, hear me speedily.  It is an astounding part of our Christian life that we can call out to God.  No matter where we are, or how great the trouble, He is already turned towards us!  His ear is tuned to our cry.  His answer can come speedily because He has no restrictions of time and space.  Today, reflect on the true privilege that is ours to be able to pray to the Lord and know that He hears and answers.  Of course, He answers our prayers according to His tender mercies.  That concept carries with it the understanding that God answers according to what is best for us, not just what we may think is best, but what God knows is best.  Like a wise Father, full of tenderness and love, He gently works in our lives to bring about that which is His best for us.  He truly works all things together for good (Romans 8:28) for His children.  Part of that working is how He wisely answers our prayers with a Yea, or Nay or Wait patiently, child.  Help us to not only expect answers from God, but to trust His sovereign will.  We could reword the verse as a prayer to the Lord of thanksgiving from our hearts.  "Lord, I know that You hear me because Your lovingkindness towards me is so good!  I know that You are ever turned towards me because of Your character of mercy.  I am filled with thanksgiving and praise towards You when I stop to consider the great multitude of your mercies towards me and all Your children.  They are more than can be counted and eternal as the Heavens.  Your goodness will never run out, the answers to prayer will never be used up!  Thank You that I can trust Your answers to be right and good.  Thank You for being the God who is real and thank You for being my Savior."

These verses should be watch words to Christians, encouraging us to follow their admonitions.  No more sour faced "churchianity" here!  No more doubting or self seeking.  If we were filled with praise and honoring the Lord all the day, not only with our lips, but with our lives, we would certainly find much less time to give in to the temptations to sin.  The devil would be a truly defeated enemy.  A friend of mine designed a children’s Bible club called Seekers, with these verses and Colossians 3:1 in mind: If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  The theme song taught that Jesus sought us in His love, that we are to seek Him and the things that are above, everyday, and seek to share these truths with others.  Seeking involves a real heart-filled earnestness of searching out the Word of God and coming to the Lord in prayer.  It involves living for Him and seeking to know His will.  David tells us, Let all those that seek [God] rejoice and be glad in [Him].  If you are an earnest, seeking Christian, you can have real rejoicing and gladness in your life.  The life of a worldly person is never one of true joy and gladness.  Even their worldly pleasures are tainted and soon lose their enjoyment.  But as saved children of the King, we can have Heavenly joy.  As we increase in the knowledge of our Lord, we will be constantly filled with greater joy and gladness.  David also said, Let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.  Remember the joy of your salvation when you were newly saved?  Remember how excited you were and full of gratefulness for His great sacrifice on Calvary to save your soul?  How often does time and the "busy"ness of life cause us to lose sight of that love of our salvation.  One of the most effective tools of the devil is when he makes us forget that feeling of overwhelming joy and gratefulness for our salvation.  He makes things appear ordinary and then blunts our joy.  Soon he can even whisper doubts into our minds about the validity of our salvation.  But we can stop the process if we remember to retain that first love to the Lord and relish the joy of our salvation!  Often times we need a revival in our hearts to not only remember our love and joy in the Lord for His salvation, but to see it increase.  Search your heart even now.  Has there been a dimming of your love and joy?  Ask the Lord to revive it again.  As the proper response to that gratefulness, we should say with David, Let God be magnified.  The word magnify in the Hebrew contains the meaning of lifting something up in honor.  We could say, "Let God be lifted up in honor in my life and in my heart."  We are to say this continually, not just some of the time, not just on Sundays, but continually.  What a marvelous heart cry for each of us to have!  To cap our hymn of praise today, is verse 8 of Psalm 71.  Realizing the joy, gladness and love that is ours in Christ, we should be able to say, Let my mouth be filled with thy praise and with thy honor all the day.  Today, make this your goal and watch word: let your mouth be filled with praise and honor to the Lord.  That will certainly mean the way we say some things will have to be changed.  All the day will have to mean just that, every minute, no matter what happens, no matter who else is involved, we will have to speak the words that are edifying, words of praise and of honor.  "Lord, these verses are very convicting to me.  They remind me that I should be a more joyful Christian.  Lord, I know that I need my joy to be more evident and I desire it to fill my heart.  I don’t want to be a sad or discouraged Christian.  Then, Lord, these verses remind me to recall the love I felt welling up in my heart, overflowing to You and to others when I was first saved.  Lord, increase my love toward You.  Give me the true love of Christ and help me to demonstrate it daily to You and to those You place in my life.  Revive me, O Lord.  Help me to magnify You in my life and in my speech.  Lord, today fill my mouth with praise to You.  Even if I don’t speak it out loud all the day, let my mind be filled with thoughts of praise and honor to You.  Help me to honor Your name before others and live up to the responsibilities that You have given to me as a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Also Lord, as I think on these things, I realize that the most important part of all, is the praise and honor I give directly to You.  Just that private, personal mind set of praise and honor from my heart to my God.  Lord, I vow to praise and honor You more in every way.  Show me the areas I need to be corrected in my life to make this prayer possible and fill me with the Holy Spirit.  Increase my joy and love, thank You that Your love is always available for me."