Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Face Change Wisely | The Writings | Psalm 92

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Life is full of seasons. What fruit do you want to yield in your next season? How can investing in your relationship with God keep your leaves from withering? In today's episode, Tanya shares how Psalm 92 invites us to see our seasons as opportunities for spiritual growth. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. 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 92

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 Tanya Wilmuth. One of the coolest things about growing up, whether you're 17 or 77, is that you realize more and more that you don't have life figured out yet. Ideas become more nuanced. People's stories open up to reveal more complexity. You become aware that struggle is a better teacher than success. And this is one way to explain growing in wisdom. We're still in the book of Psalms. We've been going back and forth, but we're here. We're going to be in Proverbs soon. And wisdom is a major theme throughout the Bible. And it's also a major theme just in literature, scholarly literature. So scholars who studied about wisdom and moral development like Jean-Piege and Lawrence Colberg concluded that

people have to progress through stages to become wise or moral people. Things like internal conflict, self-reflection, even living in society with other people, help us progress through these stages that they identified. However, they say, once we reach a new stage, we don't necessarily stay there forever. You can actually go backwards. They believe that when people are presented with new situations, people will regress at least temporarily to a previous stage of development. That previous stage is like a little parking lot, where the individual has to stay until they learn enough to work through it. Now, the closest thing I can think of in our modern life right now is artificial intelligence. AI is new and complex. And in academics and the workplace, we're all

like throwing our hands in the art. Like, how do we use it? How do we use it ethically? How do we not use it? And so what's happening is we're misusing it. We're underusing it. We're making black and white decisions about using it. We're not using our rational, complex reasoning and thinking brains yet because we just haven't been in the parking lot long enough. We're doing this because we don't have a framework for handling it. It's new to all of us. Some of you are way better than me on this. Now, I bring up AI, but okay, let's get more personal. This is the time of year a lot of people are going through change. I don't know what yours may be, but what about acknowledging that that new situation that you or someone that you love might be

going into or might be going through is going to give you a little setback in your relationships, in your thinking, maybe in your emotions. If you're preparing for something new or preparing someone you love for something new, how do you maintain some kind of peace in your life? For God's people, Psalm 1 and Psalm 92 both tell us how we can do this. They talk about how we can look like strong trees with healthy branches who bear their fruit in season, even if we're going through change. We can look like trees planted by the water, trees that aren't moved by the wind, trees whose fruit doesn't wither from lack of rain or nutrients. Psalms 92 says,

The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. they still bear fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock and there is no uprightness in him. Now I read Psalm 92 and I wrote down two questions. One, what fruit do I want to yield in my next season?

And two, how can investing in my relationship with God keep my leaves? from withering in my other relationships. The Psalm 92 tree is a palm tree, the date palm to be more specific. The date palm was a symbol of usefulness, strength, and longevity in the Middle East. The trunk of the date palm was used for timber, and the leaves provided fiber for roofs. The new little baby leaves were used to make baskets. The leaf stalks were twisted into rope. The seeds were ground up and used to feed the livestock, and the dates, those sweet dates,

provided food security and wealth to the people. This Psalm 92 tree is useful. It has a purpose, and it does it. The Psalm 92 tree grows like a cedar in Lebanon. Now, the cedars in Lebanon grow at elevation. They face harsh winds and weather. They grow between 4,200, and 70,700 feet of elevation where other trees can't survive. They've even adapted to grow on slopes that face the sea. The Lebanon cedar is hardy. It grows deep roots to protect itself from wind and drought, and it faces the sea because more sunlight is available there. The Psalm 92 tree is planted in the house of the Lord, and it flourishes in the courts of the Lord. This tree has continual residence in the presence of the Lord, and it produces the best fruit in God's presence. The Psalm 92 tree still

bears fruit in its old age. It is ever full of sap and green. Unlike trees without deep roots, without connection to the true vine, this tree continues to bear fruit even as it gets old. Circumstances, health, they don't take away the fruit. This is not a tree of temporary flourishing, but enduring. or eternal flourishing, ever full of sap. It has the security of looking forward to eternity in God's presence, always green. So how do we become like that tree, instead of indecisive, judgmental, self-involved people who don't know how to handle change? Well, there are two clues, two keys in Psalm 92 that we can examine.

The first is that this is a Psalm about worship. Worship is a connection with God. God that does for our spiritual being what rest does for our physical body. We think of rest as inactivity, but Psalm 92 describes a biblical Sabbath that renews our strength and our joy through worshipful connection with God. Anything we serve apart from God will zap our strength. It'll take it away. It'll steal our joy. But worship of the true God makes us stronger. It's invigorating and rejuvenating. The second clue or key found in Psalm 92 is about daily living or something we call abiding. If we maintain fellowship with God, if we're abiding with God, we are continually restored.

When we seek our own glory over here on the side, we experience dead ends, burnout, dissatisfaction, and exhaustion. But abiding in God ties us to his glory, which is full of continual. beauty and vigor full of life. Let's circle back to those two questions I mentioned earlier. What fruit do you want to yield in your next season? How can investing in your relationship with God keep your leaves from withering in your other relationships? This psalm mattered to the people of God in ancient times

because they were striving and they were wearing themselves out. They sang the song together to remember how important it is to come to God in worship, especially when we feel like we can't or shouldn't. If you've let yourself get burned out and far away, he's inviting you to come back. Come back and rest.