The Pointless vs. The Worthwhile; Meditation on Psalm 9

I was meditating on Psalm 9 this morning, and as I read, as is typical, there were many things that jumped out to me. But as I prayed through the Psalm (which I strongly encourage--praying through the Psalms), I saw both my life and the lives of many of those around me throughout it's words.
Over the next few blogs, I'm going to be covering my meditations of Psalm 9 in sections. Today, I'm going to cover verses 1-2, and then the next one will cover verses 3-4, and so on.

Psalm 9:1-2
I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

I'm young and inexperienced at diagnosing the world's problems; I'll admit it! However, it appears to me as a distinct possibility that one of the problems in both the secular world and in the Church is a misunderstanding of what it means to "love". From the Beatle's "All We Need Is Love" to the 21st century Western culture's fascination with romantic comedies, "love" seems to be the message preached from anyone who wants to preach something.
That being said, it's my conviction that the Church's definition of "love" has been much more culturally defined than Biblically and truthfully defined. What I mean is this: As many in both the Church AND the secular culture know, Jesus famously said that the Greatest Commandment is "to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength," after which He said, "and a second is like it: love your neighbor. On these two commands, all the Law and the Prophets hang." Many young liberal Christians (young-like me, liberal-not like me) have taken this passage and said, "It's ALL about this ONLY", and some have went so far as to erroneously throw out the rest of the Bible because they assume they have the whole book summed up in one statement (which, in a sense, I suppose they do--Jesus said it!).
However, since Western culture has stripped "love" of it's element of truth and puffed up it's element of feeling, "love" has all but lost it's meaning. That's why divorce is so prevalent, crime is getting worse, and social interaction is being diminished to online communication instead of TALKING amongst people in a live setting(I understand I'm writing a BLOG, ONLINE--it's because I'm attempting to meet you where you are, which is online!).

To a non-Christian secular world, I COULDN'T expect anything less than a misunderstanding of love. The Bible makes clear that they've "ALL turned away", they've "ALL went their own way", they've "ALL not known the way of God", they've "ALL had their heart's hardened by their sin", etc.
The problem is when this creeps into the Church, and it has. Since everyone assumes that "love" is much more a feeling than a commitment based on truth and honesty, they figure that their relationship with God is simply about "feeling Him" and "being happy". So when the storms of life take over, "God must not be there" is the response; or when 'church stuff' gets stale or remedial, "I feel like I'm going through the motions--lets change some things up" is the response. This is all true when the fact of the matter is, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer has famously said, "God is not a god of emotions, but a God of truth."

Furthermore, if you develop conclusions about God based on worldly standards (ie: your thinking, your experience, etc.), you will be sadly and despairingly let down all your life. Your relationship with God must be understood as being on GOD'S terms and not YOUR terms, as He reveals Himself to You in ways He CHOOSES to, and the Scriptures have to be your primary discerning factor in thinking on the things of God. I think that that understanding being lost in our society is one of the chief causes of the clear lack of God's Spirit in Christ's Church all over our country today: People trying to speak of God in humanly terms because they try to understand God by humanly criteria, instead of allowing the Holy Spirit given them by Christ the access to change and transform them into Christ's likeness at the behest of the Living God who gives all good things and uses His creation to justly glorify Himself. People have taken freedom and the 'American dream' of being in control of our surroundings, and have erroneously applied it to the God who holds all things in His hand and doesn't answer to ANYONE. And because of this, when God doesn't "do what we say", we get mad and assume He must be dead, or must have never existed in the first place.
The reason why there are so many in our culture who don't believe in God isn't because of the lack of evidence (there's more evidence FOR Him than there is AGAINST Him), but rather, it's because of people thinking that they're the ends of all creation, that God should be who they want Him to be, and when they've prayed to Him (not really prayed--more like given Him a trial to prove Himself) and He hasn't answered how they wanted, they dismiss Him.

Thus you see the predicament we're in: The Bible tells us to love God with our whole heart and whole self, and the fact is, we can't, because our society has run so hard and far from the true meaning of love in the first place.
When "loving God" has a misunderstanding that it's really all just a feeling, the few who DO stick around (in spite of the fact that they know it's not happiness every second) THEN make it all about that which they can do to please God. Our churches are so full of people who doubt God's existence because they can't feel His presence, so they take it all the way to the other side and act off of the compulsion that the way they 'live in God' is to do, do, and do some more.

It breaks my heart--I've been in the Church my whole life, and I've worked in many different kinds of churches over the years, and the one thing I take as a common denominator from every church is this: an outside Christian on fire with the Holy Spirit would probably despair of seeing God's presence among most churches, simply by diagnosis of the fact that most people in Church don't SPEAK of God as anything more than the bearded man who sits on a throne and gives me what I want because I perform well for Him.
Do you understand that last part? I think many find their identity in God by way of performance: they're involved in church, they pray before meals, they help out in ministries, they tithe, they stay out of trouble, etc...ALL because they think it justifies them with God.
But it doesn't--those kind of people were the people Jesus had the strongest words for when He was here; why?: Sinful motives getting muddied with holy acts is worse than sinful motives leading solely to sinful acts, because the former is based on lies, and the latter is at least consistent. That's why Jesus told the church in Laodicea He hates their lukewarmness and wishes they were either hot or cold.

The hard truth in the Bible is that no matter if you're a murderer on the streets or a church deacon or elder, you're at the same base level of sin before Christ's work is applied to your heart by the Holy Spirit when you surrender to His goodness in spite of your badness. Let me rephrase: Both the murderer and the church leader are the same kind of sinful; it's just that one kills God's people, while the other kills God's Holy Name by their bringing selfish idolatry into church office. Idolatry causes a murderer to murder, and it also causes preachers to preach for the sake of impressing others and getting affirmation. The common denominator? Idolatry.

So when the Bible speaks of "loving God", many people have idolatrous misunderstandings of what love even is, and thus CAN'T truly and freely love God with their heart the way that God intends for His people to.

You can look around and blame culture all you want, but you need to remember what Paul said to the Ephesian church when he told them "our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Don't be like Adam and blame someone else; be like David and take responsibility when you sin. But know first and foremost that the only hope you have is that JESUS took responsibility finally for all sin; that's the ONLY hope you have in the whole world.

My point is this: If you have succumbed to the worldly temptation of assuming that you are independent, don't need anyone to help you, and only need a dose of God every now and then, you've bought into a lie. God is your source. You come from Him, and one day will go back to Him to be judged. The reason you'll be judged is because He's God and you're one of his creations. But He wants you and has done all that needs to be done to GET you, in Jesus' Cross. You just need to admit your need for it, and accept all that it is.

David was able to be honest before the Living God when he wrote, "I will give thanks to the Lord with my WHOLE heart." He knew that all he had was given him by God, and the only proper and honest response was to give thanks, but not just thanks--thanks with his WHOLE heart. Every chamber of his heart had to be an open door to who God is, because God formed every chamber anyways. The truth and honesty of God's God-ship over David's life was something that took root as truth in David's mind, and then traveled to his HEART. Knowledge comes first, feeling comes second, and NEVER the other way around.
That's why he wrote, "I will recount all your wonderful deeds." Most people don't think God's done ANY wonderful deeds, because they're just hoping God will take them to a better place than they're in right now. And any time God gives someone what they want, they realize they're still broken and torn up inside like they were before. Thus, David sings of God's wonderful deeds because He knows that God doesn't answer to him; rather, David answers to God, and since God is sustaining David's life, giving him breath, sight, taste, provisions, etc., the only proper response is thanksgiving.
He then says, "I will be glad and exult in you." Whatever it is that you're in right now, you can be glad. But the only way to BE glad in the sense of 'gladness' that is the same in every situation is to know that every situation is under God's sovereign hand. Thus you'll be thankful for the happy times, because of the joy God is allowing you to know, and also thankful in the trials and hard times, because of the fact that you know God is moving in ways you can't see, shaping you, forming you, sanctifying you, disciplining you because He loves you (Hebrews 12).
Finally David rounds out verse 2 with, "I will sing praise to your name O Most High."
If I can sum up all I've said so far in this post in one statement, it would be this: You will never be able to truly and whole-heartedly worship God for who He is, if you don't understand that He is the Most High. To many people, God is just a bearded guy sitting on a throne. But God is eternally transcendent, eternally everywhere, and eternally powerful and all-knowing. Scientists will never find the end of the universe because it's infinitely big, and it's still not as big as God is. If God is the Most High, you will be the most true. That famous line of Proverbs 1, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" is misunderstood only because of a) misunderstanding what fear is, and b) misunderstanding who God is. Fear is not scared sitting in the seats watching Paranormal Activity--fear is realizing how small and insignificant you are and how big and significant God is.

Let me conclude: you will never understand Psalm 9:1-2 unless you understand the words David's using. You'll never understand the words David's using unless you, like Him, realize how sinful and wretched a sinner you are. And you'll never be able to realize it unless you come to the Cross honestly and let Jesus be your substitute; He'll let you be His righteousness. But it calls for an honest surrender and a full commitment to Jesus having Lordship over ever aspect of your life: heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Pray over Psalm 9:1-2, if you dare.