Echoes from the Psalms.

In 2016 me and my wife Dawn were over in San Francisco waiting for our first grandson to make an appearance.  We decided to wait by visiting the Grand Canyon – what a place and what an experience!  This was one of those times when the use of the word awesome was appropriate but inadequate!

This visit has helped me recently regarding a new discipline I am learning which I’ve called – ‘Echoes from the Psalms!’ The Canyon had some brilliant echo points and to my amazement so too do the Psalms! The difference between the Grand Canyon echoes and the echoes from the Psalms is this –

It is another voice that comes back to me through the Psalms and not my own.

That voice, through the Psalms, is the Father’s and it will resonate with where we are, how it is and how we might respond to the situation we are in!  When we take this new ‘echo’ and through the discipline of meditation, implant it into our hearts, it will strengthen and empower us to persevere and overcome.

Here are the steps I have learnt and am applying about this wonderful truth and discipline –

1. Bring the issue we are struggling with and honestly name it before God.
2. Start to read the Psalms with an expectation of hearing His echo!
3. Continue to read the Psalms until you hear His Echo!
4. Take the verse or verses and read these again, in different versions.
5. Keep reading until you see the word, image or thought, the Father is releasing to you!
6. Repent of any thoughts that are contrary to what He is showing you.
7. Then take this new thought and implant it into the soil of your heart which will produce the fruit contained within His echo!
8. Every day and throughout the day say what His echo is saying!

Confessing is coming into agreement with what He has said.  Faith also comes by hearing the Word of Christ.  Roms 10:17

An often-used word throughout the Psalms is Selah.

Selah means to – ‘pause and calmly think about that, in His presence!’

There is nothing off limits to Him concerning our lives and He desires to empower every aspect of our life.   My final thought about this Echo from the Psalms is taken from studying angel Gabriel’s words to Mary in Luke 1:37b –

For nothing is impossible with God.

The word nothing is actually made up of two words: no and thing.  The word for thing is Rhema.   Rhema is God’s now word which comes out of His said (logos) or written word.

Jack Taylor sums it up well –

“No, freshly spoken Word of God will ever come to you, that does not contain in itself the ability to perform itself.”

The Echo from the Father which is His now Word will have the power within itself, to perform and deliver what is being promised.  All we have to do is implant it within our hearts.   This implanting is vital because James 1:21 says – “it is the implanted word that is able to save us! “ The word able means –

“a word whose property it is to root itself like a seed in the heart.”

The power and capacity of His ‘seed Word’ needs the soil of our hearts.  When His Word is in our hearts it is able to produce a thirty, sixty or hundredfold harvest.  Mark 4:20

So, don’t let any issue boom around in your hearts and minds.  Go to the Psalms, hear His echo, follow the above steps and begin to see the issues, your life and your contexts change.

Every blessing,

 

Andy