Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

Psalm 136:1-3
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good.
His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords:
His love endures forever.
Those are just the first three verses of this psalm. It has 26 verses in all, and they all end with the refrain “His love endures forever.” You have to feel that the psalmist is trying to make a point! During the psalm, he points to the wonder of God’s creation and the way He had helped the people of Israel through their turbulent history, illustrating the consistent love of God for His people.
As a foster carer I learned a great deal about attachment. In order to be secure and develop in a healthy way, every child needs to have a firm attachment to a parent or carer. If that attachment is disturbed and unreliable, there can be serious consequences for the young person which will often continue throughout their life. This psalm is all about attachment. God promises to love His people and to do so consistently forever. The psalmist celebrates the fact that this had been the experience of the people of Israel through the centuries. They could, therefore, look to the future with confidence, knowing that God would continue to love His people and provide for them. This can be our own experience if we live close to God. Just like the psalmist, we can live our lives celebrating God’s consistent love for us.
Question
How firm is your attachment to God?
Prayer
Lord God, I thank you that You love me completely and give me the strength to love others day by day. Amen

Psalm 133:1-2
How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe.
It’s always inspiring to see unity at work. Whatever the organisation, it is encouraging to see a group of people working effectively and happily together. Whether it’s a football team, a school, business, family or church, it is a blessing to see everyone working together in harmony. The thought of anointing oil being poured over a person sounds quite sticky and messy to me, but it’s clearly intended as a picture of generous blessing. As the oil falls down, everyone can smell the beautiful fragrance and share in the joy of unity. Whatever way you look at it, unity is something to be celebrated.
The beauty of unity should inspire us all and encourage us to do two things. Firstly, we need to receive the unity that God longs to give us and which we discover as we live our lives more closely to Him. Then, secondly, we need to put in the hard work of looking after that precious gift. The apostle Paul wrote: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). Day by day, we need to look for ways of promoting unity, through our prayers, love, encouragement and kindness. It’s hard work, but the results are beautiful and inspiring for all to see.
Question
What can you do to promote unity in your church and family?
Prayer
Loving God, thank you for the gift of unity. Help me to go out of my way to maintain and strengthen unity today. Amen

Psalm 132:3-5
[David vowed:] “I will not enter my house or go to my bed, I will allow no sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, till I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
When David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel, it was a major political event. However, for him it was far more than a political moment. David saw the city as a spiritual centre for the nation. This would be the place where people would come to worship, so the first need was to bring the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. When this happened, David was so exuberantly joyful that he famously danced before the Lord with all his might. Relocating the ark was the first step towards the building of the temple. This didn’t happen during David’s lifetime, but he went to great lengths to ensure that all the resources were brought together so his son Solomon could oversee the building of the temple.
David was totally committed to the temple project because of his devotion to the Lord. Towards the end of his reign, David organised phenomenal quantities of metal and wood to be brought together for the temple construction. He himself contributed 102 tonnes of gold and 238 tonnes of silver. The value of this in today’s money would be well over a billion pounds!
We won’t be invited to build a temple, but we need to learn from David’s single-minded devotion to God. Serving God faithfully needs to be our priority and our all-consuming passion.
Question
What do you learn from David’s devotion to God?
Prayer
Lord God, help me to focus more of my energies on serving You day by day. Amen

Psalm 131:1-2
My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.
CH Spurgeon, the great Victorian Baptist preacher, commented that this is “one of the shortest psalms to read but one of the longest to learn”. Learning to be humble is so tough that anyone who claims to have achieved it has a very long way to go! Humility is a wonderful and exciting quality in a person because the truly humble person knows where they stand before God. They recognise His greatness and power and understand that they are privileged to be His servant. They don’t exaggerate their own importance and are eager to see everything that is best in those around them.
I don’t believe King David was suggesting that the humble person avoids difficult issues. Far from it, the humble person is more likely to take on the big challenges. It is the arrogant person who falls flat on their face when they take on great challenges in their own strength and fail. David says that he has become like a weaned child. At the time, children were weaned at about the age of three. It’s as if David was saying that he was like a toddler in his relationship with God. He wasn’t a baby any longer, but he was still continually and humbly dependent on God. And that’s the life God wants for each one of us.
Question
From whom have you learned most about humility?
Prayer
Loving God, teach me what it means to be humble and to live like a weaned child. Amen

Psalm 130:3-4
If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
One day in 1738, John Wesley reluctantly attended a Christian meeting In Aldersgate Street, London. He was feeling thoroughly depressed, but during the meeting someone read from Martin Luther’s Preface to the letter of St Paul to the Romans and Wesley felt that his heart was “strangely warmed”. He saw this as the moment when he truly trusted in Christ alone. What is less well known is that, later that same day, Wesley went to St Paul’s Cathedral where he was deeply moved by this particular psalm. It perfectly expressed his experience of salvation through the forgiveness of his sins.
The psalmist speaks of the completeness of God’s forgiveness. He doesn’t keep a record of our sins. They are wiped out. When someone has done you wrong, the hardest part is often to forget what has happened, but that’s what God does. He chooses to erase our sins completely from His memory.
The psalmist knew that his life was totally distorted by sin. He couldn’t think of standing in God’s presence. But now the door was open to a new life in which he could confidently stand before God and serve Him. This message of forgiveness comes into sharpest focus in the New Testament because it was precisely why Jesus died upon the cross. Through Jesus taking the full weight of our sin upon Himself, He is able to offer us new life.
Question
How do you respond to the fact that God is willing to forgive and forget all your sins?
Prayer
Loving God, thank you for Your willingness to set me free from my sins. Amen