Today Our Daily Bread Psalm 95 & 2 Cor 2:14

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month.
“Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

Psalm 95:1-11
A Call to Worship and Obedience 1 Oh come, let us sing to the LORD! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. 2Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. 3For the LORD is the great God, And the great King above all gods. 4In His hand are the deep places of the earth; The heights of the hills are His also. 5The sea is His, for He made it; And His hands formed the dry land. 6Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. 7For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice: 8"Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, F88 As in the day of trial F89 in the wilderness, 9When your fathers tested Me; They tried Me, though they saw My work. 10For forty years I was grieved with that generation, And said, "It is a people who go astray in their hearts, And they do not know My ways.' 11So I swore in My wrath, "They shall not enter My rest.'"
Footnotes
F88: 95:8 Or Meribah
F89: 95:8 Or Massah

~Lena’s Journalin’~
The Psalmist is emphasizing who God is, asking us if we realize who He is, because when we do, we cannot help but praise Him. Only blindness and deafness, or being mute and lame would be able to keep us from praising Him. What is so awesome, is when we begin to realize who He really is, we can also know that He both desires to heal all of the things that hinder us from knowing Him as He is and seeing who He is in a deeper way, and he is powerful enough to change us in the state we are in, heal us deliver us etc.
Every exhortation this Psalmist gives is to a plurality of people, just as God (the father, Son & Holy Spirit) are 3, yet one, plural, so are we. One person is plural, they are a spirit, have a soul and a body. He goes further than that though, He assembles a larger body of praise an earthly choir of sorts, to resound and magnify who and what they each know of Him. A corporate body is such a demonstration of Him in the atmospheric realm. It is an open display of God before every enemy force.
It is one things, if the 3 part, plural, me praises god in my heart or a loud in my car on the way to here and there. It is a wonder when my husband and I do that together and lead our family into praising God as an everyday practice, but when we take who we are individually, and we lead our family members to a place where other people and other families such as us worship God from our hearts together, there is quite the heavenly symphony, on earth!
God is looking for those who will join themselves to this kind of choir. This choir is such a powerful tool in His hand against His enemies. It shows principalities and powers that there are corporately assembled, joined together and unified people who are willing to be “on God’s side” contradicting every force that offers itself to their lives except the force of God’s Holy Spirit. That there are actually, really and truly a people who are willing to come out into the open and confess He is Lord of all. He’s more important than whatever else I could be choosing to do at this time. That this demonstration of unity is worth the sacrifice of my preferences and differences with my neighbor. It’s way bigger than us, it’s about His Kingdom, His power, His glory on earth, being demonstrated.
I believe “us” can be seen in many ways. One is that we believe and live what we beleive, we all do it individually, wherever we are, all the time. That’s an “us”. Then there’s the times when we come together with our local church family and all assemble in the same place to offer praise together at the same time, that’s also an ‘us”. The point is that WE praise, WE exalt Him, WE magnify Him, etc.
I can serve God well by myself, I can even lead my family to do that well and that is exemplary, awesome, so contrary to what goes on in our world of today. When I “get there” (Wherever “there” is in my journey of growth) God wants me/us to go further. It is great and awesome that we are there and are happy and have a beautiful household, marriage, work life etc. Now He wants us to invite others into our lives to see how we were able to “get there” too. Anything we learn or attain by His awesome grace, He wants us to use to share with others. He wants us to join with others who believe like we do and impart the portion of our victories with others. The world needs strong families, strong faith in God, happiness etc. If we have it, it is to give it, not only maintain it for our own family and almost guard it for our families to have privately. It is for the world, it is for the hurting church awaiting repair and healing.
Jesus said Go and He meant it. He also said if we do not give what we have for the use of others, we will risk losing what we’ve been given.
Give God praise, alone, with your family and congregationally. The more you give, the more you’ll get!
Anything else is really rebellion to what He’s said to do. Why is it mentioned “ in the rebellion”? Right in a procession of praise? Why would he talk on and on about God’s goodness, being thankful etc and then add, don’t rebel? He knows our thoughts, our hearts. He knows us. He knows what the world is trying to tell us about balance etc. The balance is going so extreme with God, His word, the assembling of His people for praise, etc that every worldly and ungodly hold that was on our lives has no more place, and has to let go of us! That blindness is healed, that deafness that kept me from hearing my Father’s voice is healed. That whatever kept me from walking out my lifestyle of faith for the rest of my days is removed from my life. That whatever held my tongue back from giving praise to God and people, and from telling others who He really is, is released from it’s hold on my life! That is the balance. Sometimes a bit of unbalance needs to come into my life to throw off whatever was oppressing my life and keeping me from being aware and able to give God praise. We hear God’s voice in His word, we either accept or reject what we hear. We choose to embrace what is written and allow it to come to our understanding and personal application or we explain it away, saying how it doesn’t apply to us personally. In the doing of His word is life. In everything else there is only death, the hard way around, the staying of the enemy hand upon me, rather than God’s hand upon me.
(daily repetitive verse)
2 Corinthians 2:14
Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.