So, over the past few days we have been looking at how important thanksgiving is when it comes to ‘keeping in step’ with the Lord, through busy times, overstretched times, through those challenging times, and through times of trouble.
Yesterday I came across some verses in another psalm that seem to gather all those thoughts and take them to another level. They are from Psalm 25, verses 4 and 5, and I am going to write them out from The Passion Translation.
‘Lord, direct me throughout my journey so I can experience your plans for my life. Reveal the life paths that are pleasing to you. Escort me along the way; take me by the hand and teach me. For you are the God of my increasing salvation; I have wrapped my heart into yours!’
That last beautiful phrase is more commonly translated as ‘For you I wait all the day’ NASB. Which brings us back to ‘waiting on the Lord’ from Isaiah 40:31 about which we wrote in previous blogs. (Numbers 191,192 and 193). We shared our belief that thanksgiving was an essential part of ‘waiting on the Lord’. I now sense that the Holy Spirit is saying that this ‘waiting’ is not just for those times when we feel weary, physically emotionally or spiritually; it’s not just something whereby I can pause, ‘renew my strength’ and then just carry on running or walking because I’m back to ‘full steam’…..
Waiting on the Lord is in fact to be my ‘posture’ for the whole of life.
In the footnotes to Psalm 25, in The Passion Translation, we read that the Hebrew word most commonly translated as ‘wait’ is qavah, which also means ‘to tie together by twisting’, ‘to entwine’ or ‘to wrap tightly’, and so this is why the translator has chosen to use the phrase ‘I have wrapped my heart into yours’, in place of ‘for you I wait all the day’.
If thanksgiving is an essential ingredient in our ‘waiting on the Lord’, then it will also play a big part in bringing us to that place where our heart is ‘entwined with His’. This is His desire for us, to be walking that closely with Him, inseparably linked with Him at the deepest level of our being, throughout all the ups and downs and challenges of life.
Is this ‘deep calling to deep’ ? Psalm 42:7. Was this Daniel’s secret in finding the place in God where ‘He reveals deep and hidden things’? Daniel 2:22. That entwined place where the Lord was able to share with Daniel the key to interpreting a significant dream for a mighty king? If so I’m in!!
The simplicity that is thanksgiving, is the key to a deep and close friendship with the King of Kings, and it brings me to the place where I can say ‘I am my beloved’s and He is mine, and His banner over me is love’. Thanksgiving is a key to keeping me in that posture of ‘waiting on Him’ throughout the day, a key to keeping my heart entwined with His.
