"I Love Thee, O Lord, my Strength"

May He grant you your heart’s desire, and fulfill all your plans! Psalm 20:4 (ESV)

This is the first verse I came across on Saturday evening that seemed to shout at me, and I sent it to a friend I thought would also benefit from it. I was thinking about it again yesterday, looking it up to remember the exact wording. I started looking at some cross references and came upon this one:

For Thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness... Psalm 21:3a (KJV)

I sat and just stared at the verse for quite some time, knowing how much the words have meant in my life over the past months yet unable to put it all into words. I decided to look it up in Matthew Henry’s commentary – where he said exactly what I was thinking:

That God had surprised him with favours, and much outdone his expectations (v. 3): Thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness. All our blessings are blessings of goodness, and are owing, not at all to any merit of ours, but purely and only to God’s goodness. But the psalmist here reckons it in a special manner obliging that these blessings were given in a preventing way; this fixed his eye, enlarged his soul, and endeared his God, as one expresses it. When God’s blessings come sooner and prove richer than we imagine, when they are given before we prayed for them, before we were ready for them, nay, when we feared the contrary, then it may be truly said that he prevented us with them. Nothing indeed prevented Christ, but to mankind never was any favour more preventing than our redemption by Christ and all the blessed fruits of his mediation.

Amen!

Lately I have been praying every week for a verse that I could pray throughout my week. Some weeks, I get to Wednesday and wonder where the verse is. But this week, my cup has been overflowing. On Sunday evening after I got home from church, I stood out under the stars and prayed for something that seems completely impossible. I know God does the impossible. I beseeched Him on that promise. Yet there are so many moments in my life when my faith isn’t even half the size of a mustard seed. That night when I pulled out my Bible to read before bed, I started the book of Luke…where verse 37 called my name:

For with God, nothing shall be impossible.

Will the impossible happen? In nine days? I don’t know. God’s will will be done. And I’ll pray it is impossible.