When Government is a Yoyo, where is your hope?
What This Teaching Is About
Paul Primus teaches that worship is not only singing, but offering daily life to God as a living sacrifice. Drawing from Psalm 121, Romans 12, and Israel's pilgrimage songs, he calls viewers to anchor hope in the Lord rather than in fearful news, suffering, or shifting governments.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to today's episode of the prayer stream. My name is Paul Primus. I am one of the team members of the National House of Prayer. Last few weeks we've been talking about endurance and we've been talking about persecution or suffering. Sometimes those two get interchanged. Not really topics that we like to talk about, not ones that are popular because nobody likes having to endure and nobody likes having to suffer. But yet Jesus was very clear and he said you're going to have to endure, you're going to have to be prepared for suffering. So, we want to make sure that we're well prepared for these issues. Now today I want to expand this just a little bit
and I want to introduce worship into this into this topic. And why worship? Well, I believe that worship is the one thing that we can do that we can live our lives around to keep our our focus upward, our hearts towards the Lord. I don't know about you, but for myself all I have to do is open that that phone that I've got or the internet or go out into the streets and I'm going to hear things about what's going on in the world. The world is so afraid. The world is is fearful of all kinds of things. We're fearful of the economy, we're fearful of the climate, we're fearful of other nations, we're fearful for our own for our own health. And and there seems to be an ever-increasing
list of things for us to be scared of. But yet God doesn't want us to be scared of things. Now sometimes we get confused in the middle of this because sometimes these things happen to us. We've done our very best to follow the Lord. We've done our best to be obedient. In fact, we have been obedient. In fact, we have worshipped the Lord. We have we have sung and we have given and we we've lived our lives as the best as we know towards the Lord. And yet sometimes things don't go the way that we expected and sometimes that can throw a wrench into our understanding. But yet, God is the same. And when we live our lives with the end goal, the end in mind, this will help us
this it's like it's an anchor for our souls that yes, we're going to go through some things that are not very pleasant. We're going to have ups, we're going to have downs. But yet, where is our hope anchored? Is our hope anchored in today and how things look today or is our hope anchored in something that goes beyond the here and the now, something that steps into eternity? I believe that worship is one of the things that we do, one of the ways that we live to prepare us for that eternity. Psalm 121 says this, "I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. You will not let your foot be moved. He
who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore." In those days, Israel had a constant threat of invasion from neighboring nations. A threat of invasion, a threat of annihilation. And then, they they just had to continually be reminded, "Where is our help coming from? Who is the one that protects us? Who is the one that guides us? Who is
the one that that heals us when we need it?" And we need the same reminding today. We might not be dealing with the exact same issues. And even if we look across the world, there's different issues that different people face. But yet, there is still one place where our help needs to be coming from and it needs to be coming from the Lord. This was a Psalm of Ascent. This was a psalm that was written so that as as Israelites, as they were making their pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship. And when I say worship, I'm not talking about going into a place to sing some songs. I'm talking about bringing a sacrifice. As they were going there to do that, they would sing these psalms in these
songs of ascent to remind them who is our God, who is the one that protects us, who is the one that guides us, who is the one that watches over us. It's not ourselves, it's not our neighbors, it's not our government. Israel had a lot of kings. They had good kings, they had really bad kings. Today, [snorts] we have we have a government. We don't have kings, but we do have a government. And we tend to follow the same pattern of we have we have governments that more align with the fear of the Lord and the principles of the kingdom. And then we have ones that seem to go in the complete other direction. Well, if our hope is in our government, if our hope is in our leaders, then our
souls and emotions are going to go through that same yo-yo of thinking things are really good as far as God is concerned, and then the things are not going so well. Well, this psalm and these types of psalms remind us where are we supposed to be looking? I believe worship is not something that just happens on a Sunday morning when we sing. We have largely treated worship as a song set on a Sunday morning. While singing and and making music is a part of worship, it's not really a good representation of what worship is supposed to be. Romans chapter 12 says, "I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual worship." Some translations will say which is "your reasonable service." I like that worship and service get interchanged in that thought because worship is not just something that we do on a Sunday morning with a with a great sounding band. It's not That's not a good definition of it. It's our service unto the Lord. It's How are we choosing to serve the Lord? Paul understood this. This is why he said, "By the mercies of God, I want you to present your body as a sacrifice, not one that dies, but one that lives for the Lord." I know that we know this verse. I know this is an often quoted passage around this idea. But yet, this is one of those things
where we need to be reminded of on a continual basis. You have a life to live. You have time. You have energy. You have your thoughts. And we are constantly bombarded, absolutely bombarded, on social media, on the news, in our cities, in conversations with other people. And it's all vying for our worship. It's all vying for our attention. Are we going to join the world in fearing what they fear, in calling conspiracy what they call conspiracy? This is coming out of Isaiah where he says, "Do not call conspiracy what they call conspiracy. Do not fear what they fear." Psalm 121 and many other Psalms echo the same thing over and over. Our help comes from the Lord.
Friends, if we live our lives as worship unto the Lord, our rising up, our going down, everything that happens in between, the things that feel spiritual, the things that feel extremely mundane, cooking breakfast for our children, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, going to work. Maybe it's a job that you don't love, but yet it's the job that you have. When we offer these things to the Lord as an opportunity to display his goodness somehow, some way to the world that's around us. It becomes worship. Thank you for joining me on today's episode.
Comments