‘We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what You did in their days, in days long ago…’ [verse 1]

i found this a difficult psalm to grab a lot from, but one thing that jumped out at me was that line at the beginning which is such a powerful line. it reminds me of a contradictionary line found in Judges which says:

‘After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. 11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger 13 because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.’ [Judges 2.10-13]

this psalm stresses the importance of story-telling – in the days of the early church before they had printed copies of the bible in their hands [and before even the priests had copied versions of what we now see as scripture] they had to rely on story-telling – we see this on many occasions in the book of Acts with Peter and Paul and Philip and Stephen among those who share the story of Jesus and see peoples lives transformed.

but it is on an even more intimate level in families where we see the importance of this. so as to avoid a generation growing up who have not heard of God or the things He has done. we have to continue to speak out the stories of what God has done in our lives.

in fact in the book of Revelations verse 10-11 it says, ‘For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.’

talking about how the enemy is ultimately defeated, it mentions that it is by the blood of the Lamb [what Jesus did for us in dying on the cross] and by the word of our testimony [the stories of what Jesus has done in and through us] which is so powerful – it means that these testimonies, these stories of how God is at work in and through our lives, have the power to defeat the enemy.

don’t stop telling the stories. don’t stop living them!

[To return to the Intro page and be connected to any of the other Psalms i have walked through before now, click here]