Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer. [Psalm 4:1 (KJV)]
Mornings, I read a short devotional from Streams in the Desert, a devotional by L.B. Cowman. Compiled between 1918 and 1924 and first published in 1925, it consists of portions of inspirational sermons, tracts, church bulletins, hymns, devotions, and poetry Mrs. Cowman collected through the years. Each day’s reading begins with a portion of Scripture and a recent devotion began with Psalm 4:1: “Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress.” Because the devotional uses the King James Translation and I usually read the NLT, I didn’t recognize this verse; nevertheless, I had a good idea what it meant.
My morning’s prayer had begun much like David’s—with a plea for God to hear my prayer. It then went something like, “O Lord, please not again! I can’t go through this another time. How much more can I take?” Apparently, based on the day’s verse, God heard me, but I wasn’t so sure I liked His answer. It sounded a lot like, “This is a growth opportunity and you can take all that is given to you!” I certainly wasn’t pleased with the devotion’s explanation that the psalmist was “declaring that the sorrows of life have themselves been the source of life’s enlargement.”
Curious about the verse, I turned to my NLT Bible and found a vastly different translation: “Free me from my troubles.” While I’d rather be freed from my troubles than be enlarged by them, Scripture’s purpose isn’t to accommodate our preferences; it is for our edification, enlightenment, and growth. Confused by the different tenses and dissimilar translations, I turned to a lexicon to determine the meaning of this verse in its original Hebrew.
The psalmist used the word rachab which clearly meant to enlarge, grow wide or large, broaden, or make room for. Throughout Scripture it was used in the sense of extending or enlarging one’s understanding, heart, steps, territory, borders, and mouth. Rather than escaping from troubles, this verse is about growing large enough to handle them! Moreover, while my NLT uses the present tense, most word-for-word translations use the past. Preserving the tense and word usage found in the original Hebrew writings, Young’s Literal Translation reads, “In adversity Thou gavest enlargement to me; Favour me, and hear my prayer.”
Psalms 3 and 4 are believed to have been written by David during his son Absalom’s rebellion. If so, David was about 61 years old and God had given him a great deal of trials and enlarging in the more than 45 years since being anointed by Samuel. This psalm is David’s vote of confidence in God’s future grace because of God’s past grace. The troubled king knew that the God who enlarged, expanded, and strengthened him in the past could do so again. He asked God that, hearing his prayer, He would repeat His mercy.
God has the power to divinely deliver us from our trials. More often than not, however, He doesn’t because there is purpose in those trials. The good news is that, while God may not free us from the challenges, He never will abandon us in them! Because of God’s past grace in the trials of yesterday, like the psalmist, we can count on God’s future grace in the trials of today and tomorrow. Indeed, my past troubles have enlarged me. They matured my faith, strengthened me, grew my understanding of God’s will, multiplied my prayers, intensified my trust, expanded my capacity to endure, and developed the ability to find joy in all circumstances. No matter what I face, when I remember God’s past mercies, like David, I can lie down in peace, confident that God will keep me secure in His loving arms!
Let God enlarge you when you are going through distress. He can do it. You can’t do it, and others can’t do it for you…. Life’s trials are not easy. But in God’s will, each has a purpose. Often He uses them to enlarge you. [Warren Wiersbe]
The Israelites had been away from Israel for less than two months when they arrived at Rephidim. With no water to drink, the people complained, questioned whether the Lord was with them, criticized Moses, and then threatened him. Fearing for his life, Moses asked God what to do. Instructing him to strike a rock with his staff, God promised that water would come gushing out and, as promised, it did. The miracle was memorialized by the name given to this location, Massah (meaning testing) and Meribah (meaning quarreling.) Unfortunately, that was not the last time the Israelites tested the Lord and quarreled with Moses.
At first, it seems that the “Parable of the Unforgiving Servant” should be called the “Parable of the Forgiven Servant.” After all, the king forgave his servant’s debt of 10,000 talents—the equivalent of billions of dollars. While the first part of the parable illustrates the value and extravagance of God’s forgiveness, it takes a dark turn in the second part when illustrating the reciprocal nature of His forgiveness—something the servant learned the hard way!
Jesus told several parables about the Kingdom of Heaven and, in Matthew 18, He compared it to a king who wanted to bring his accounts up to date with the servants who owed him money. The parable is pretty straight-forward; the king symbolizes God, the servant each one of us, and the debt our sins. One servant owed the king ten thousand talents but was unable to pay. There were serious consequences for not paying debts so the king ordered that the servant’s home and possessions be sold off and that the man and his family be sold into slavery until the debt was paid.
The Israelites were camped on the east side of the Jordan River, in view of Canaan, when Moses addressed them. After spending the last forty years as nomads in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula, can you imagine their excitement at the thought of finally having a place to call their own and their eagerness for a new beginning in a new land? There must have been some apprehension, as well. They weren’t naïve; they knew there would be conflict, battles, and even loss before Canaan was conquered.
Along the road to the Serengeti, somewhere near the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, is a crescent-shaped sand dune. Measuring about 30-feet in height and 328-feet long along its curves, it is known as the Shifting Sands. Rich in iron and highly magnetized, the sand sticks to itself when tossed in the air. When the wind blows, its particles fall back on the dune rather than get carried away by the breeze. The dune, however, is constantly on the move as the prevailing winds slowly move the entire thing across the land. Moving about 50-feet a year, it’s believed that the Shifting Sands have been traveling the savannah for more than three thousand years, sometimes changing both shape and direction. Of course, the dune moves so gradually that you don’t see its motion. Nevertheless, stakes in the ground indicate its location in previous years.
Devotions of the Heart 