Always Before Me

This morning I was reading through a few chapters of Psalms and came across this verse from Psalm 16:8 ESV. It says, “I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.”

I find this verse to be a beneficial one to commit to memory. It has a way of anchoring our hearts to the truth amid troubling circumstances.

The practice of setting the Lord before us is simple, so it is no surprise that there are so many distractions in our world. Perhaps the greatest truth we can offer you as a ministry is the simple power of coming before the Lord daily.

Something transformational happens in our hearts when we behold the Lord. The world's concerns begin to fade away, and the glory of the Lord is elevated in our lives. It is not that our goal is to become numb to the world around us, but the anxiety-filled grip that current events and controversies can have on our hearts begins to loosen.

The enemy will try to distract us from seeing the Lord because when we see the Lord, we see his truth, power, and love. A common argument is that we don’t have time to sit around and pray when there is so much work to bring healing and redemption to our world. Just because there is a risk of getting stuck in a “holy huddle” does not justify eliminating the call to come before the Lord.

If we do not set the Lord before us, we run the greater risk of being shaken, and a church shaken is an ineffective church. Ephesians 4:14 describes this risk of being “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”

Suddenly, the invitation of Psalm 16 becomes more than a warm reminder but a life-or-death principle of living in the kingdom. God has promised that he will be with us. By continually setting the Lord before us, we grow in intimacy and knowledge of God and receive his covering and protection. It is not that we somehow become more rigid and stable as an aftereffect of seeing him, but that we stand closely with a God ready and able to defend and preserve our life.

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