Psalm 84 Part 4
As we continue with this Psalm I am in awe of the Sons of Korah and how they express their experience of living in the Lord’s presence. In Verse 7 the result of being in His presence is reinforced for it says “They go from strength to strength; every one of them appears before God in Zion.” NLT says: “They will continue to grow stronger, and each of them will appear before God in Jerusalem”. Living in the Lord’s presence is not a static experience – we must never forget we are either going forward or we are going backwards – there is no such position as standing stationary in God. It is a lie of the devil and we need to be on guard against that lie. As I look back over my life there were times when I thought that I was coasting along when in reality I was backsliding – the sad thing is at times we can talk the talk but not walk the walk. One important lesson I have learned is that God’s blessing is not like a tap, it cannot be turned off and on when we feel like it. I have sadly learned that when I backslide I do it because I have lost trust in God and for trust to be restored it takes time and a lot of perseverance to come back to the place where we once were. The verse very clearly states that people of His presence go from strength to strength or as the NLT says “They continue to grow stronger”; this is so encouraging. The interesting thing about strength is you do not know its greatness until it is tested. I have experienced this over the last 8 years since Barbara unexpectantly went to heaven. There have been so many situations where the Lord has helped me so much and a good example of this is I never thought that I was capable of writing 6 books and doing a weekly blog for my Web page, if this is not going from strength to strength I do not know what is! Now we come to the next part of the verse which says “each of them will appear before God in Jerusalem”. To understand what this means we need to be reminded of the difference between living under the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament if you wanted to experience the presence of God then the only place that you could experience it was at the Temple in Jerusalem. God taught the Children of Israel through His Law that they had to go to Jerusalem several times a year to experience His Presence. It was their choice whether they obeyed God and went to the Temple, and it is interesting to note that when they experience God’s presence they became stronger. And because they were stronger they had a greater desire to go to the Temple in Jerusalem. We do not live by the Law because Jesus fulfilled the Law when He died on the cross and rose again on the third day. However, the same principle applies, when I live in the presence of the Lord I grow stronger and because of this strength, I live in His presence continually. Now is not the time to allow the pressures of life to stop us from being aware of His presence and we choose to spend time with the Lord and go from strength to strength!