Finding God in All Things: Part 2 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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The Lord is my light and my salvation –
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life –
of whom shall I be afraid?
…
One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.

Full Chapter: Psalm 27

Transcript

Good morning,

I’m John North here to help you start your day right as we spend some time with God together in God’s word. The Bible says that God’s word is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword. Isn’t that right? God’s word comes alive when we are truly open spiritually to hear from God. Sometimes it is sharp, sometimes it hurts us, but always with the purpose of doing surgery to make us better. Have you spent some time with God in His word yet today? Let’s do that together.

We’re looking this week at the theme of how to find God in all things in your life. We said yesterday one of the foundational keys is learning to listen, to just wait for God to speak to you. Today we look at Isaiah chapter 25 verses 1-5. Isaiah says, O Lord, you are my God. I will exalt you. I will give thanks to your name, for you have worked wonders, plans formed long ago with perfect faithfulness. For you have made a city into a heap, a fortified city into a ruin, a palace of strangers is a city no more. It will never be rebuilt. Therefore, a strong people will glorify you. Cities of ruthless nations will revere you, for you have been a defense for the helpless, a defense for the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a rainstorm against a wall, like heat and drought. You subdue the uproar of aliens like heat by the shadow of a cloud. The song of the ruthless is silenced.

And he goes on talking about God and what He’s done. The second key to learning to find God and His activity in all things in your life is to learn to praise God, to praise Him. One author has said this: When I give thanks, my thoughts still circle about myself to some extent. But in praise my soul ascends to self-forgetting adoration, seeing, and praising only the majesty and power of God, His grace and redemption.

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Isn’t that right? Praise focuses us on God. If you want to see God in everything, then learn to praise Him because when you learn to praise God, your attitude shifts from being focused on yourself and focused on the problem that you’re facing in your life to being focused on God. When your attitude is focused on God and that is your mind set as you think about things in life, you think about everything in relation to Him.

In relation to the fact that He is able to act in this situation, you’re listening for his leading, his guiding, because you know he’s involved and he’s able to respond to you. Don’t just praise God when you feel great. You don’t praise God because of how you feel. You praise Him for who He is and you get excited about how He feels about you, which is love and grace and a readiness to forgive if you’ll turn to Him.

God wants you to learn to focus your life around Him, and one of the most important things to make that happen is to learn to be a person who is constantly praising God.

I’m John North.