Summer in the Psalms, Part 6

To avoid being prone to envy, take time for worship and celebration. By shifting focus from what others have to the blessings already present in your own life, envy can be diminished and a renewed perspective can be gained.

Great Things
Phil Wickham

Everlasting God
William Murphy

Shalom
Bridge Worship

Your Presence is Heaven
Israel Houghton

Joshua 18:7
The priesthood of the LORD is their heritage.

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Psalm 73:1-2
Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.

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Psalm 73:3
For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

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Psalm 73:4-9
For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.

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Psalm 73:10-11
Therefore his people turn back to them, and find no fault in them. And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?”

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Psalm 73:12-14
“Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.”

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Psalm 73:15-16
If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ I would have betrayed the generation of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task,”

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Psalm 73:17
Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.

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Psalm 73:18-20
Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors! Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.

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Andy Stanley
“Our thirst for stuff, money, recognition, success, progress, intimacy, sex, fun, relationship, partnership. We never get enough of any of these things to fully and finally satisfy our desires. In fact, he notes, the more you feed an appetite, the more it escalates in intensity.”

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Psalm 73:21-22
When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.”

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Psalm 73:23-28
Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. 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.”

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Matthew 5:8
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

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How should we live while we wait?

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Christopher Watkin
“Modern society as a whole relentlessly catechizes its citizens into very particular ways of being in the world, from the grand liturgies of the nation state to the daily habits of [domestic life]. From the time we wake until the moment we fall asleep, we are being catechized into society’s rhythms and patterns…that nudge us into particular sets of expectations, hopes, fears, and ways of living in the world…Everything in our environment is predisposing us to notice certain aspects of reality and to neglect others; it is all predisposing us to value certain things, qualities, and ideas, and to trivialize others.”

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