Dear Friends,

Have you noticed that some people are never content. They torture themselves wanting this and wanting that. How can one beat that syndrome? Today’s devotional reveals the secret. Meditate on it. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

• Psalm 73

  Psalm 73   English Standard Version (ESV)
  God Is My Strength and Portion Forever
  A Psalm of Asaph.
  73 Truly God is good to Israel,
  to those who are pure in heart.
  2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,
  my steps had nearly slipped.
  3 For I was envious of the arrogant
  when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
  4 For they have no pangs until death;
  their bodies are fat and sleek.
  5 They are not in trouble as others are;
  they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.
  6 Therefore pride is their necklace;
  violence covers them as a garment.
  7 Their eyes swell out through fatness;
  their hearts overflow with follies.
  8 They scoff and speak with malice;
  loftily they threaten oppression.
  9 They set their mouths against the heavens,
  and their tongue struts through the earth.
  10 Therefore his people turn back to them,
  and find no fault in them.[a]
  11 And they say, “How can God know?
  Is there knowledge in the Most High?”
  12 Behold, these are the wicked;
  always at ease, they increase in riches.
  13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean
  and washed my hands in innocence.
  14 For all the day long I have been stricken
  and rebuked every morning.
  15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,”
  I would have betrayed the generation of your children.
  16 But when I thought how to understand this,
  it seemed to me a wearisome task,
  17 until I went into the sanctuary of God;
  then I discerned their end.
  18 Truly you set them in slippery places;
  you make them fall to ruin.
  19 How they are destroyed in a moment,
  swept away utterly by terrors!
  20 Like a dream when one awakes,
  O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.
  21 When my soul was embittered,
  when I was pricked in heart,
  22 I was brutish and ignorant;
  I was like a beast toward you.
  23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
  you hold my right hand.
  24 You guide me with your counsel,
  and afterward you will receive me to glory.
  25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
  And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
  26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
  but God is the strength[b] of my heart and my portion forever.
  27 For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;
  you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
  28 But for me it is good to be near God;
  I have made the Lord God my refuge,
  that I may tell of all your works.

Psalm 73:1-28

“My favorite Psalm these days is 73…because it concludes, ‘I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.’ It describes our covetous tendencies: ‘I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.’ It describes God’s kindness in giving us a present and a future: ‘You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.’ And it gives us no other reasonable option: ‘Whom have I in heaven but you?’”

[Marvin Olasky, “Minor Regrets, World Magazine, (June 11, 2016), p. 64]