Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - A-S-K | The Writings | Psalm 111

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Are there sins you're still struggling with? Does your sin wake you up to your own weakness? Do your weaknesses lead you back to the feet of Jesus? In today's episode, Patrick shares how Psalm 111 encourages us to continually ask God for the help only He can provide. Prepare your heart this Advent with the 2024 TMBT Advent Calendar! Each day, receive a new prompt for Scripture, prayer, and reflection—designed to help you slow down and reflect on the Hope, Love, Peace, and Joy that Jesus offers. Sign up now to receive your free Advent calendar! Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 111

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Have you ever felt hopeless about changing? I'm sure I'm not the only one who spent decades fighting the same sins, and nonetheless still struggling with them. It's embarrassing to admit because we all tend to envision the Christian life as a continual climb up into the right. But the reality is often quite different. Just the other day, I was on my early morning walk before the sun rose, and I was confessing my sins. I just had this overwhelming wave of frustration and shame and irritation sweep over me. I felt hopeless that I could ever change. And as I watched, I just found myself wondering, why are there some sins we can so easily

resist and break, but others that haunt us, sometimes for our whole lives? In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks about receiving an ecstatic vision of the heavenly realm. And he goes on to share something relevant to my question. He writes in 2 Corinthians 12.7, Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest in me. Now, commentators debate about what this thorn in his side is? Was it a physical ailment? Perhaps

poor eyesight? Or was it a sin that plagued Paul? The honest truth is we really don't know, but either way, this passage gives anyone who's lost hope for change a principle to follow. Sometimes God allows difficulties like sin or even a sickness to remain in our life so that, like Paul said, we don't grow proud. And instead, we learn to relax. upon God's strength, even in our weakness, because of our weakness. And I can understand why God might do this because I've been there. You see, I've gone through seasons where obedience to Jesus felt easy. I had more control over my tongue, my anger, my compassion, my lust, my impatience, my greed, my eating, my drinking, my everything. And in those moments when they first begin to click,

I always find myself praising God and thanking God and asking him for more help to continue going. But slowly over time, I don't know about you, I find that I thank him. less. I start to rely on myself a lot more. I start to think that I'm doing this by my own willpower. I mean, I would never say that consciously, but that's the way I'm living as though I'm doing this by my own strength and by my own righteousness, that those things are what's carrying me throughout the day. I begin, again, even though I would never say it to think that God's strength is perfected in my strength, not that God's strength is perfected in my weakness. And inevitably, God shows me mercy. Sometimes it's the mercy of a sickness or an injury to wake me up

to what's going on. But in my life, more often than not, God's just allowed me to fall into a pit of pride, the pit of pride that I've dug. He says, if you think that you can walk so righteously on your own and your own strength, then why don't you try to do it on your own? And the minute I try to do it on my own, I fall back into sin, and I finally remember my profound need for the living God. You see, Paul says it perfectly. His power is only expressed in my weakness. The minute I start trusting myself is the minute I start relying on my own strength, and that's the minute I no longer tap into God's strength. So perhaps that's why we all struggle with what ancient Christians used to call besetting sins. Those sins that seem to come and go, but never go all the way away.

And so when they do come back, they're not coming from God to submerge us into shame and hopelessness. If God's allowing us to struggle, they're coming to awaken us to our pride and to our need. They're coming to awaken us to our profound helplessness apart from Jesus. They're coming. to show us that we're like little children who can't eat or sleep or even change our own diapers without the help of our Heavenly Father. We are needy. They teach competent, confident, proud people like you and me that neediness is not just an occasional part of the Christian life when we're struggling. Neediness is the Christian life, plain and simple. I mean, just ask yourself a question. Do you want to be known as needy? Of course not. I don't want to be known as needy either, but Paul is clear. God works in needy

people. He came to raise the dead. That means the only qualification for enjoying his mercy is not being successful or competent or moral or good looking or whatever you think makes you worthy. The only requirement to receive Jesus' good gift of life is being dead, being absolutely unequivocally in need of his help to live and live life abundantly, to know that apart from him, I am dead. let me return to my morning walk. As I'm thinking about it, as confessing my sins, I turned the corner to my house. And as I did, I saw my garage door. And upon it, the moon had cast a shadow through the trees that read plain as day the letters ASK ask. Now let me say this. Normally, I hate this kind of stuff, and I think it's cheesy and reading into things. I hesitated even to share it. But here's the truth.

If you've never seen letters written on your garage door, well, you haven't experienced something incredibly bizarre, and that's all I can say it was. I've never seen anything like it. And that made me rethink my perspective on the whole cheesy, weird, and whatever nonsense. Here's the truth. As soon as I read the word, ask, projected onto my garage by the moon, I felt the father's invitation. I felt Jesus's words. Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find knock and it shall be open to you. Your heavenly father wants children who ASK ask. Why? Because he loves to give. And he loves to give abundantly. And perhaps the maturity he wants to grow in your life and in my life isn't merely that we would sin less. Of course he wants that. Perhaps what he wants is an even deeper

maturity. The kind of maturity you can only have if you're someone who knows that you're needy. Perhaps he wants me to need more. Perhaps he wants me to become more like a little child who never stops asking. Or at least that's what my kids do. They never stop asking. And I think that's what my father wants. On today's episode, I was supposed to go over Psalm 11, and I really am. But rather than reading it and explaining it, I want to read it to you as an encouragement and as a prayer. Why should you ask your father for help? Why should you always be needy before him? Why should you be like a little child who can't eat or sleep or do anything on your own? Why should you seek his power and emit your own weakness and embrace your own weakness? Well, it's because we

worship the only strong, perfect, and powerful God, the God who is praised in Psalm 11. He says, I read this today. I realized this is why I ask him, because this is who he is. Psalm 111 says this. Praise the Lord. I will extol the Lord with all my heart in the counsel of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the Lord. They are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are his deeds and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wonders to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and compassionate. He provides food for those who fear him. He remembers his covenant forever. He has shown his people the power of his works, giving them the lands of other nations. The works of his hands are faithful and just. All his precepts are trustworthy. They are established

forever and ever, enacted in faithfulness and uprightness. He provided redemption for his people. He ordained his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his. His name, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise. God provides our food. God provides our shelter. God has shown you the power of his works, the provision of his redemption, the promise of his covenant. So this is wisdom. Fear him. As a child fears his father. Fear him by asking him to provide because he's a powerful provider. Fear him because he is strong and far from despising your weaknesses. He looks upon your weaknesses as the very means by which he will work in you through you for the sake of the world and his

glory.