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The following teaching is brought to you on behalf of Malcolm Smith
Ministries, a ministry dedicated to leading believers everywhere into a
knowledge of the love of God.  If you would like more info on the ministry,
and/or would like to comment on whether you found this teaching beneficial,
e-mail to Randy Hunt at rlhunt@hou.amoco.com.


LOVE IN THE MORNING  (Psalm 90:14)

by Malcolm Smith

Moses wrote this prayer at a weary time in the history of Israel. A generation
before the time of its writing, the people of Israel had stood at Kadesh,
gateway to Canaan, and made the fateful choice to go their own way rather
than God's way. They refused an adventure of faith in God which would
have given them Canaan, the homeland of promise. God honored their
decision, and said they would wander in the desert only a few miles from the
land of promise until they were all buried in the sand. The young decision-
makers of that fateful day were between twenty and thirty years old, and
destined to be dead within forty years... bleached bones in the desert by the
time they were seventy-- eighty, at the most. The lives of these wanderers
had been unending sadness. Moses described it as ending each year with a
sigh (v. 9). The fact that they knew, give or take a few months, when they
were going to die, underscored the meaninglessness of their existence.
Whatever heights of success they reached, they would be a heap of bleached
bones within forty years.  The only ones to live outside of that depression of
hopeless disbelief were Joshua and Caleb, who had stood against the nation
at Kadesh and had God' s promise of one day entering the land. The
forty-year period was finally drawing to an end. The new generation, those
who were children at Kadesh, were now grown and eager to take the
inheritance their parents had refused to enjoy. In the light of this, Moses
prays...it is time for a new day to begin and the days of misery to be over.
All these years, as Moses had walked with these moaning and complaining
people through the wilderness of their exile, he had carried a double burden.
His was not only the sadness of living in less than what could have been; but
he also knew why they had chosen as they had at Kadesh.  The problem was
that they were ignorant of the character of their God. If asked. "Who is your
God?" they would have described Him as the God who is Power. When
Aaron had created their concept of God in an idol. he chose a calf. or young
bull--a symbol of power, of virility. In their minds, God was the young bull
who had impaled Pharaoh on his horns and gored Egypt's gods as He led
Israel to Sinai.  But when man worships a God of power, His miracles grow
thin and even boring. After miracle food on the desert floor and water
gushing miraculously from the solid rock through the desert wasteland, the
God of Almightiness becomes "ho-hum --What' s next on the miracle menu?"
And a God of power can be as unpredictable as a young bull calf. He might
be all they need, but then...who knows? If He has all power, He has a right
to do whatever He wants, whenever He wants. The only person these people
had known who had absolute power was Pharaoh, and men's lives had hung
on the whim of his moods, which could change with the wind. They believed
God could work His wonders on their behalf, but they did not know HIM
and, so, could not trust Him. Israel had a God based on what He DID, His
acts; Moses knew the heart of God, the motivation behind the acts. From the
day of his encounter at the burning bush, Moses had been fascinated by God.
At Sinai, he asked to be shown His glory...to know who He really was. He
had seen what God had done; he wanted to know who God was. This
request was granted, and Moses was given a glimpse of God's glorious
Person. He had come to know the heart of God as compassion and
lovingkindness (Exodus 34:6,7). The word "lovingkindness" is not to be
understood as a human kind of love. It speaks of the kind of relationship
arising out of the making of a covenant. It can only be understood as the
love that says, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Lovingkindness is as
tenacious as a British bulldog; when the world walks out, this love digs in its
heels and refuses to leave.And it is not human romantic love, based on
feelings and rooted in emotions. It is a love of covenant commitment and,
therefore, operates quite apart from feelings. God's love is not an emotion
that wavers day by day; it is the total commitment of His Being to seek our
highest and best, and to bring us to our fullest potential as humans. God
does not see something good and beautiful in us which arouses His feelings
of love toward us...we do not woo Him and cause Him to fall in love with
us! If that were the case, the first ugly, sinful thing we did would cause Him
to reject us.  He is Love, and He loves us because of who He is-- not
because of who we are. He does not love what we do, but He is committed
to us, pursuing us down every blind alley and bypath of foolishness. He will
not let us go. His is a love that is not looking for what it can get out of us--
but a committed love that searches for opportunities to give to us. It is
saying to the recipient, "For as long as we shall live, I am for you."  The God
who has revealed Himself to man through Scripture and, finally, in Jesus--in
His coming, and in His death and resurrection--is the God who is
lovingkindness. Thus He loves us and gives Himself to us...He will never
leave us nor forsake us.  Tragically, many believers have never seen Him as
love; they see Him as power. No one will come to faith by just seeing
miracles. Miracles point to who He is, and that is when faith springs in the
heart.  Israel did not see God as lovingkindness; they saw His acts of power.
Moses knew His ways, the kind of God He was, and the love that He had for
these people. Because of their total lack of understanding of His love, they
could not trust Him to be their strength in taking the land. Faith is born out
of knowing the love He has for us; it is the resting response to the One who
gives Himself to us. He is not the force, and to call Him the Almighty is to
miss His heart. He is Love who is the Almighty and the Infinite Force.  If
man is to make force or raw power work for him, he must depend on
knowing the forrnula and have faith in it. But the power that issues from
love demands faith in the Person of love Himself. The forty years of
meaningless wandering was a monument to a people who had never come to
know the God of love.  At this point, with the new generation and the
possibility of enjoying all that God promised, Moses prays verse 14. The
language Moses uses is reminiscent of a baby having slept secure in its
mother's love, now waking to look up into the delight of her eyes. It is
waking to the consciousness of being loved... watched over, cared for,
protected, fed, and cleaned, day and night, by the mother. Suppose we were
to ask, "What has the baby done to deserve this?" or, "Have arrangements
been made for the child to repay the parents for this inconvenience?" Our
questions would be considered unnatural, even immoral. The child was
conceived in love, anticipated and prepared for with love's excitement, a love
that has been to the gates of death to bring it into being. The parents' love is
unconditional, spontaneous...it has nothing to do with the looks of the child
or its performance. So God is love. He loves us unconditionally,
spontaneously. We were conceived in His imagination and fashioned after
His image, to be brought to where we are at this moment by the blood of the
Lord Jesus. It is slanderous, and immoral, to even ask what we must do to
earn and deserve that love. The child discovers its personhood and identity
through the eyes and touch, through the cuddles, of its parents' love. It is a
scientific fact that a baby who is not touched and held will probably die or, if
it survives, will have severe emotional problems. And a person who has been
held and loved will still never know the true meaning of life without the
embrace and knowledge of love from God. Moses prays that the new
generation will learn to wake every morning, resting with total confidence in
the love of God. and will receive all His promises and blessings with joy and
gladness. Significantly, Moses prays that they will be SATISFIED with His
love. "Satisfied." in the Hebrew language. is a rich picture word describing
being filled with an abundance of gourmet food. It is also used to describe
the earth after the rain has soaked it and all the vegetation has received
enough water. Moses prays that they will awaken every morning to be
drenched in the life-giving love of God. That sense of satisfaction is the
lifelong quest of every man and woman. When we are satisfied in our
deepest selves, many of our emotional--and even our physical--problems
disappear. Man seeks that sense of satisfaction which comes from feeling
that he is fulfilled as a human being...his hours have meaning, which make
sense out of the ordinary and mundane. Apart from God, man seeks this
satisfaction through intellectual pursuit, through the exciting of the
emotions, and through the feeding of his body...he will even seek it in
religious exercise. But man will always be dissatisfied until he is responding
to the love of the living God. Only in knowing God's love will the rest of life
make sense. As the forty years drew to a close and the land of promise again
became the inheritance to be taken, Moses prayed this psalm. I find it
fascinating that he  should pray and ask God for a daily revelation of His
love. Considering the awe with which the people held Moses. one would
think he could have lectured them on the subject of lovingkindness and, by
the knowledge they gained, they would live in it. But Moses knew
better. God is the only one who can make known to us His love. We won't
find it in a religious lecture or a formula which we can learn and use to
manipulate Him. Nor is it in a beautiful poem to titillate our emotions and
give us God feelings. It is God, himself, the Lover, who must open our eyes
and satisfy us with His love. This prayer is man, in helplessness, asking God
to make the love He is real in our hearts. Moses' prayer was partially
answered in the next generation and seen in the exploits of faith which
worked by love in The Book of Judges. But it would not be answered in its
fullest dimensions until the coming of the Holy Spirit, who pours out the
love of God in our hearts (Romans 5:5). In the history of the early Church,
we read of the Holy Spirit "falling upon" the believers. This is an ancient
expression that, in modern English, means to give a bear hug. It is used in
Luke 15 to describe the father running to the prodigal and "falling on his
neck and kissing him." The Holy Spirit is God hugging you in your deepest
self and smothering you with divine kisses at the deepest level of your
being. This is not a one-time experience to be filed in our spiritual resumes.
Moses prayed that morning by morning we would awaken to the realization
that we are loved. The world, and much of our religious training, has taught
us to perform in order to be accepted. We have spent far too long living in a
state of doing in order to find satisfaction for ourselves...to find acceptance
and love from others, and from God. We now come humbled to receive love
we cannot earn...to be still and let Him tell us we are loved: to let the Holy
Spirit descend into us, pouring out the love of God. We come in stillness to
think on and repeat His words of love to our minds. which have been jaded
with the doctrine of "perform to be accepted." We begin to realize that He
loves us as we are, and gives meaning and purpose to all of life. I challenge
everyone reading this to begin each day, from the moment you open your
eyes, by celebrating the God of love and praying this prayer. You may not
feel anything, but SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS. I was X-rayed the
other day. I did not see or feel anything, but I noted that the technicians kept
behind protective walls. They know you cannot be exposed to those rays
without being affected. So it is as we consciously begin our day knowing
that we are loved. Such experiential knowledge will produce, according to
Moses, "joy and gladness all our days." Joy is the result of a life that is
functioning as God intended us to function when He made us. You might say
that joy is the hum of an engine that is at peak performance. Man' s highest
performance is to rest in the love God has for him... the hum will be joy, and
the result will be endless creativity arising from the sense of meaning he now
has in life. Stop wandering in the wilderness. Be satisfied with His love and,
in joy, day by day, receive all His promised blessings.
