Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name Jah, and rejoice before him. ~ Psalm 68:4
STRONGS: Jah ~ the sacred name: – {Jah} the {Lord} most vehement.
For me this was a most excellent image of the Lord that ran through my mind as I read Psalm 68:4. It seems that for every great moment of time in my life, it is followed by a message from the destroyer Satan. He loves to drag me back down from a mountain. So this vision of the Lord and His angel high fiving one another over my victory… I started to write “a” victory, but that could be anyone else’s. And that was not the image, or description God revealed. But it my victory.
As I began to draw this morning I was listening to a CD that I had found of some friends I used to sing with. My heart was broken over the past tense of the thought. Satan had drug two down from the mountain and there they stayed.
That’s his goal, you know. He cannot steal the soul of a child of God, but he can drag them off the mountain top and into a valley where the shadows overtake the sun. Hope is not lost, it’s just clouded over.
That’s why Psalm 68 was so very important to me today. I needed to find strength from the Lord’s zeal and passion and the hope of His promised victories.
The word vehement can be defined as passion. And I am a passionate person; which opens the heart a little wider and makes you vulnerable to being a target by people and spirits that do not like passion, but would rather the world stay in a state of doldrums.
It’s a real struggle for me.
So I search for passion in the scripture and I find it only three times.
An Incomprehensive Passion
Acts 1:3 ~ To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:
The word passion in this verse means “suffering.” That for which I cannot comprehend the depth of agony, nor the fact that He did it for me.
That is the passion that every Christian should strive to understand. It would make us better at our roles of King and Priest for the Lord Jesus Christ if we understood what the price was for us to carry that title.
An Indebted Passion
Acts 14:15 ~ And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein:
When Paul spoke to a lame man from birth (who the scripture said “had faith to be healed) and the man leapt! His healing caused the people to view Paul as the healer, a god, and not understanding that it was from the Lord and because of the man’s faith that he was healed. So Paul and Barnabas remind them in this verse that they are not god’s but servants of the One true God and Creator of all of all the earth.
An indebted passion causes tears to sting my eyes when I realize how very unaware I am of what I owe the Lord Jesus Christ for what He’s done for me and in my life.
O God, help me understand.
An Inherited Passion
Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.
As children of God with an indwelling God we have inherited that passion as well! I don’t think it strange that the image of Jesus and the angel came into my mind this morning because the Spirit of God has caused me to be a passionate soul.
I get excited over the potential that God has placed in my life. Do I have days of discouragement? Yes! But I serve a God Who is so much more powerful than the demons of this earth; and to hear that He is riding upon the Heavens brings joy to my heart. He’s ever present in my life and this morning in the midst of frustration, He gave me a victory.
How awesome is the God we serve!
