For Thy pleasure [Updated 2024]
Dwelling place
Because you have made the Lord, my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your tent. Psalm 91:9-10
WARNING: Do not use Scripture as a good luck charm, magic potion, or spell to “manifest” your secret wants. Scripture is God’s personal letter to His people for us to use in developing our relationship with Him in the vast spectrum of life’s matters. Psalm 91 is likely the clearest portion of His Word regarding His protective nature toward people; it reveals His rock-solid determination to stand with you, guard you, guide you, protect you, heal you, and help you through the ups and downs of your life. And, seeing as Psalm 91 is, like most of Scripture, a relational guide for us humans in our interactions with the Most High, it also discloses what our part of the deal is.
Because you have made the Lord, my refuge…
You have a choice in this matter. You can MAKE the Lord your refuge—your place of shelter, protection, or safety. You don’t have to. It is entirely up to you, and He will 100% allow you your choice. In fact, you can use Him as a “sometimes” refuge, the One you go to from time to time, and He will honor that. However, as with most relationships, this “on and off” mentality can wear thin, and true intimacy and connection will never fully materialize. You see, there is Someone else in this interplay besides you…
…even the Most High, your dwelling place…
The time came in my life when using the Lord as my “sometimes” refuge wasn’t cutting it. I clearly saw my need to give all of myself to Him—for all time. And something very amazing happened…He became my dwelling place. Jesus said, “I am now standing at the door and am knocking. If anyone listens to My voice and opens the door, I will go in to be with him and will feast with him, and he shall feast with Me” (Revelation 3:20, Weymouth NT). What a blessing to know that you are never alone, that Someone greater than you loves you, cares for you, and has promised to never leave you or forsake you! (See Hebrews 13:5b.)
Just one more verse about this concept of making the Lord your dwelling place—or in other words, your home. Jesus was talking to one of His disciples along this line and said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23). The fact that you are loved is clear. That the Creator of all things wants to live with you in an ever-deepening, give and take fellowship is mind-boggling!
No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your tent.
BECAUSE you’ve made the LORD, even the Most High, your dwelling place, these things are yours to BELIEVE and EMBRACE by faith:
No evil will befall you… Truth be told, I’ve had some scary things happen since I’ve made Jesus my Lord. I’ve also experienced broken relationships and friendships, have lost loved ones and dear friends to death, and have had to have various surgeries (including open heart). I’ve been sick more than once and have broken a few bones. I’ve suffered rejection, humiliation, and excruciating loneliness at times. I’ve cried more than a few times out of genuine hurt and then again, at times, from self-pity or rage. Nevertheless, through all of these difficulties, the Living God kept right on being my God, holding me, steadying me, and bringing me through to the end of each dark tunnel. Therefore, I can boldly say, No evil has befallen me.
Because of His amazing care, I am still alive. Once, probably in 2010, I heard the Lord say one Monday, “Don’t mow your lawn on Thursday.” (Thursday was my go-to day for mowing.) Wednesday came, and I had a hundred excuses why I didn’t want to mow that day, but I could sense His powerful nudge, “MOW! NOW!” I did and then came back inside, took a shower and made dinner. Thursday morning around 10:30, I was in the kitchen looking out the window into my backyard. My cats sat at the screen door, also looking out. Suddenly, a deafening CRACK! sounded. A large silver maple had just given up the ghost! TIMBER! It fell across the width of my backyard and clipped a large branch off of another tree on the opposite side. WHOOOOMFFF! Down it went! The cats looked at me, I looked at them; all of us looked back out at the splintered mass of trunk and branches in the yard under which I would’ve been squashed like a bug…and I started DANCING! I whooped and hollered and danced and praised God throughout the house, thankful for His simple instruction on Monday, “Don’t mow your lawn on Thursday,” and super thankful that I didn’t ignore His nagging, pushy prompting on Wednesday to “MOW! NOW!”
…nor will any plague come near your tent. We lived through a couple of years of plague-related panic not even five years ago. Although I didn’t lose any friends or loved ones to the virus we faced, I know many who did, and the fear and grief of that time is indelibly etched in our national and global consciousness. I remember in those early days of the shutdown how the lack of knowledge about this thing, its transmission, and how to treat it brought fear to many. And there I was, in early spring as trees and other plant life started pollinating, that I experienced serious shortness of breath. I was alarmed. Today, I realize I was suffering then from an allergy-induced asthmatic reaction, but back then, everything was suspect. I prayed and paced my house several hours a day, and slowly calm and peace regained control of my mind. I knew that the Greek word for “Spirit” (pneuma) was the same as the word for each of these: “breath,” “lungs,” and “air”. So, knowing that my Father would make a way for my health, I prayed, “Holy Pneuma, I ask You to breathe Your pneuma into my pneumas and bring forth fullness of life to my airways! In Jesus’ name, Amen!” Over time, my lungs started opening back up, and what a blessing it was to breathe WITH the Holy Spirit!
We all know that we live in an imperfect, messy, germy, dangerous world. But the Lord has chosen to take a special interest in each one of us…and to go the distance with YOU if you are willing to go the distance with HIM.
…I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. Revelation 3:20, NKJV
Dorothy
© 2024, Dorothy Frick
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Boast in your weaknesses
Anyone out there bummed about weaknesses, insults, distresses, difficulties…even persecution? Well, it just hit me! That means YOU are in a premier position for the power of God. How on earth??
The Lord reminded me that Paul the Apostle of old had TONS of weaknesses and difficulties, and he didn’t like any of them! He asked the Lord THREE times to lift some of this mess from him, and God responded, “My GRACE is sufficient for you, for POWER is PERFECTED in WEAKNESS” (2 Cor. 12:9a).
Then Paul wrote, “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather BOAST ABOUT MY WEAKNESSES so that the POWER OF CHRIST MAY DWELL IN ME” (2 Cor. 12:9b).
Here’s the scoop, then—to TRULY be able to make your boast in Christ, you HAVE experienced, ARE experiencing, and WILL experience various weaknesses, difficulties, insults, distresses…even persecution…in your determination to pursue, love, and obey Jesus fully—both publicly AND privately.
As you are facing various difficulties, you simply do what Paul did—you pull up into the grace of God, allow HIM to fight your battles, and BOAST in your weaknesses [but not in a self-pity sort of way—He’ll even help you with this].
If you’re like me, you’ve tried again and again to conquer your weaknesses and difficulties with your own strength, know-how, and willpower. But Paul lets us in on a sacred secret—holing up in the FAITHFUL GRACE OF GOD and TRUSTING HIS POWER to take over—is SUFFICIENT. God wasn’t lying when He said, “…power is perfected in weakness.”
He who has called you is Faithful, and He WILL bring it to pass (1 Thes. 5:24).
To sum things up—if you—as a believer in Jesus—have never been weak, then you really have NOTHING to boast about. It’s OK to be weak, for then God Himself can work, and He will get the glory.
In that, BOAST!
Dorothy
© 2024, Dorothy Frick
Read MoreWhat kind of fool are you?
I was a new believer in Jesus, barely 3 months old in the Lord, and while listening to country gospel radio, I heard a few things about water baptism. Pretty soon, I was loaded with curiosity and conviction about this new concept and asked a lot of questions of a gal in the dorm Bible study I had recently started attending. I was a sophomore, and she, having been saved as a kid, was a senior. She was as learned as Moses in my eyes, and did she ever have the answers! In fact, after all my questions were addressed, she declared, “I’m calling Rick [the leader of the Bible study] and getting everyone together tonight for your baptism.”
I was shocked. It was April Fool’s Day! How could I EVER do something so scriptural on THIS day? Wouldn’t that be mocking God??? Wouldn’t I be committing sacrilege? I poured out my concerns to her.
She had the answer. Obeying God and His Word trumps every label, every date on the calendar, and every criticism that I could ever face.
So that evening, around 7:30 or so, a bunch of us trooped down to the rock quarry just outside of campus. Someone had a bundle of blankets for both me and the baptizer, Rick, to wrap each of us in after we stepped out of the cold April first water, and others built a blazing bonfire. Evidently, that group had everything down pat, having done this many times before, and I myself witnessed many baptisms after that in the very same quarry…some in the dead of winter when we had to break the ice!
I thought long and hard about that word “FOOL” many times after my April Fool’s Day baptism and discovered that the word frequents many passages and verses in the Bible. For example, Jesus told His disciples to stay away from rash name-calling in Matthew 5:22, “…everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” In other words, He nailed all of us on our attempts to crush others with weaponized labeling. OUCH!
However, the Word of God is not timid in the use of the word “fool”. In fact, scriptures use it multiple times to identify certain individuals—and not due to impulsive rage or outbursts. No, the word is used concerning a whole assortment of behaviors, and in particular, one unique point-of-view. I want to focus on that one perspective—brought to light more than once in the Bible—used to identify a certain type of fool. In this case, in the spirit of calm, reflective study, calling such a person a fool is NOT anti-Matthew 5:22.
“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ they are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice; there is no one who does good.” (Psalm 53:1). If you look up Psalm 14:1, you’ll find almost the exact same declaration.
So—not my words, but the Words of the Psalmist—when someone declares that God does not exist; that He is a fairy tale or a Bronze age fabrication—they have effectively identified themselves as a fool. Good news is that right now multitudes of believers in Jesus once said the same thing and embraced the fool’s notion. However, somehow the Living God penetrated their worldview and made Himself known to them. For some, like me, it may take a few “visits” from the Spirit of God before they recognize “Wow! This is GOD! And He’s talking to ME!” but He knows how to work with hard cases. I challenge any of you in that category identified in the Bible as a “fool” (and I challenge agnostics as well, but He’s not so blunt in your case!) to simply ask Him to make Himself known to you. He will. But remember, He’s sovereign. He’s not a genie in a bottle, something you can conjure up in a spell or incantation, a magic 8 ball (do they still sell those things?), or a gum machine where you drop in the quarter and out pops the gumball. He is God, King of kings, Lord of lords, and is subject to no one’s commands. But He is also Love, and in love, He will reach out to you in the way He has determined best suits YOU. Remember, this is not about giving you a goosebump moment, but it’s all about preparing you for a lifelong (and beyond) relationship with Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ.
So, in honor of the 49th anniversary of my water baptism in a cold rock quarry at 7:30 in the evening, I want to honor God and challenge you on this April Fool’s Day to open your heart and simply ask Him, “Will You reveal Yourself to me?” I will be praying for you in the meantime.
Dorothy
© 2024, Dorothy Frick
Read MoreIt will not come near you
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. Psalm 91:7-8, ESV
As I ponder these words, I believe them with all my heart; but I realize that life hasn’t always been so safe and sound for many of you. So as you are reading, know that I am not blind to or callous about all the struggles, losses, and pain that so many have faced (including me). However, like King Hezekiah when he learned of his soon death, I am choosing to turn my face to the wall—the wall of God’s Word. Not only that, but I have also made up my mind that His promise will be my testimony and faith no matter how many negatives I can count on both hands. And like Hezekiah, I believe that I will see the salvation of God in so doing. The good news is, the more we meditate on this Word, our more our confidence in His marvelous help will grow.
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand…
A thousand—no, ten thousand! —may fall at your right hand. The picture the Lord has painted here is of huge devastating forces—perhaps war or terror attacks, horrific accidents, wildfires, or raging storms. Unfortunately, we have seen far too many catastrophes like these leaving a wake of destruction, despair, and death.
…but it will not come near you.
You may be in the midst of upheaval, but here the Lord reveals that He is capable of reaching into the gravest of predicaments to cover you, hide you, lift you, whisper strategy in your ear—whatever is necessary at that exact moment—to secure your protection.
You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.
As God’s “escape hatch” opens up for you, keep your eyes peeled. This is because He is not only an expert at delivering those who fear Him, but if the danger you face stems from foul play or a targeted trap, He will also see to it that those who meant to harm you will be “recompensed” or “rewarded” according to what they intended for you. The Bible declares, “God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).
Dare to believe that God cares enough about YOU to be faithful to fulfill His beautiful promise to protect you in hazardous times.
…it will not come near you.
Dorothy
© 2024, Dorothy Frick
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