Focus

Pay attention to the tension in your body. Let go of it and any expectations to do anything other than God’s will today. Prepare yourself to hear God’s word.

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Read

Psalm 20 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The LORD answer you in the day of trouble! The name of the God of Jacob protect you! May he send you help from the sanctuary, and give you support from Zion. May he remember all your offerings, and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices.

May he grant you your heart’s desire, and fulfill all your plans. May we shout for joy over your victory, and in the name of our God set up our banners. May the LORD fulfill all your petitions.

Now I know that the LORD will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the LORD our God. They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and stand upright. Give victory to the king, O LORD; answer us when we call.

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Reflect

That is wonderful—help from the sanctuary! The sanctuary is always a picture of the place where we meet with God. In Israel it was the temple, the place where the Israelites came to get their thoughts straightened out, to get their thinking corrected. There they met with God, and there they heard the Word of God, the mind and thoughts of God.

For us, the sanctuary is the Scriptures. There is where we get help. It is there that our minds are illuminated, that we begin to see the world the way it is, not the way it appears to be. There is not one of us who has not already learned that life is not the way it seems to be, that what looks to be the answer and what we are convinced at first is the way things are often turns out to be exactly the opposite. Life is filled with illusion, with deceit; things are not what they appear to be. Doesn’t your heart cry for somebody to tell you the truth, to tell you the way things really are, to open your eyes to what is going on? That is what the Bible does. And unless you are in the Scriptures, there is no help.

In other words, all the invisible help that God can give you in the day of trouble, in the hour of pressure, is made available by prayer. Remember that in the Garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus was praying and sweating drops of blood in the height of His agony, an angel appeared and ministered to Him and strengthened Him. That angel was made visible to Him in order that we might be taught a lesson of what happens when we pray.

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Pray

Lord, there are far too many places I turn in times of trouble. Teach me to turn to your sanctuary for the help that I need.

Go with God!