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Singing Psalm 59 for everlasting love
Singing Psalm 59 catapults you into the presence of one who loves you with everlasting love. His love is powerful enough to protect you from every known and unknown, outward and inward enemy. It is wise enough to bring about good through the suffering you endure. It is transformative enough to turn enemies into friends.
Singing Psalm 59 for powerful, everlasting love
“In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer. ~ Isaiah 54:8
God’s character was, is, and will be love unending among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and is expressed to all his creatures in various ways and times suited perfectly for each one. Yet at the cross, Jesus was separated from the Father in your place, in my place. Human sin, and not his own, killed him. Your sins, my sins nailed him to that cross. His death empowers you to die to your old self and be born again to a new creation in Christ.
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” ~ Ephesians 3:14-19
Suffering produces perseverance. And so it follows that suffering has an end you can count on and look forward to; enemies of the good will be slayed in Christ and redeemed by Jesus or destroyed. You ask for the former and trust his ways throughout his process of bringing about the fruit of his undying love that is sure to result in that for which he purposed it. Jesus displayed the trajectory of love that will satisfy the longings of his very own creatures whom he appointed for eternal life.
“My loving God, my God, will meet with me,
And let me look in triumph on my foes.
Spare them, O Lord, our Shield, lest we forget;
But in Your might disperse and bring them down.
But as for me, I’ll sing about Your strength,
Each day with joy, sing of your steadfast love;” ~ Psalm 59:10-11, 16a
Singing Psalm 59 for wise, everlasting love
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” ~ Romans 8:38-39
God makes you wise to his love, the only love that will never fail you. The very death that brought him down off the cross and into the grave was not powerful or wise enough to hold him there. Death died in the face of God’s penetrating love that rose Jesus from the grave. Like Jesus, you who trust, wait for, and follow him will pass through sufferings and death into eternal life marked by his everlasting love. God’s wisdom of loving dead creatures to everlasting life puts worldly wisdom to shame.
“I wait for you, because you are my strength;
Truly, a mighty stronghold is my God.
For You have been my fortress, my defense,
My refuge when the times of trouble come.” ~ Psalm 59:9, 16b
Singing Psalm 59 for transformative, everlasting love
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” ~ Jeremiah 31:3b
It is impossible to grasp God’s never ending love with a utilitarian approach to him, seeking to know what he wants from you in a merely transactional relationship where you only want to get to heaven and avoid hell—nothing more—where love isn’t factored in or has grown cold. Jesus warns against majoring in the minors of such outward appearances:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” ~ Matthew 23:15
The Lord sets free his people with his everlasting love by protecting them against predators who would influence them in what are not God’s ways. The humility of Jesus undergirds the gentle answer that proceeds from a pure heart. It disrobes the wolf in sheep’s clothing and has the power to turn enemies into friends. And Jesus says we can learn to be gentle and lowly in heart from him. You can learn to look at agendas asking yourself if this person or system is helping or hindering you from loving God who loved you first and died for you.
The most crucial decisions I ever made were in determining whom I would trust. Would I trust those who simply want to dress up my old self and affirm my every whim? Or would I entrust myself to those committed to help me die to my old self that I might live as a new creation in Christ? It took going back and forth, repeatedly being deceived by various sweet sounding, seemingly sincere people to see the difference between their “love” and the selfless, true, everlasting love of Jesus.
What do you find more incredulous? What is beyond your imagination? Suffering for eternity after one refuses to accept God’s mercy saying “thanks, but no thanks” to the opportunity to come to Jesus for rest and eternal life?
Or is it more than you could ask or imagine that God would love and save his enemies who deserve nothing but eternal damnation, that he wants to live with you now, remaking you into the image of his Son, and for all eternity to shower you with his everlasting love?
Singing Psalm 59, you intellectually and experientially know the answer as you begin to grasp hold of the Lord’s everlasting love.
“Free me, my God, from all my enemies;
From those who rise against me, keep me safe.
To You I sing my praises, O my Strength;
For He is God my Fort, my God of love.” ~ Psalm 59:1, 17
March 24 – 29, 2024