So, today…we went fishing…a GORGEOUS NJ day for it…I only caught 2 tiny smallmouths…but I did the chance to spend the morning hours with my son, Mikey and good buddy Brian.
At one point, we nosed in to the shoreline and took a walk to another remote pond…however they had drew down the lake, so we were walking to said pond across a miry bog. Jumping from rock to rock to avoid getting your feet buried up to your ankles in yucko mud.
Mikey, as you can see from the image on the left, wasn’t successful in keeping his balance and more than once ended up ankle-deep in the mud of the miry bog.
When I got home, the Lord drew my attention to Psalm 40, which I had not remembered mentions a miry bog! How many times do you have actual personal real-life experience with elements mentioned in scripture…not to mention obscure ones like miry bogs!
Psalm 40:1-3 says:
I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord.
In this Psalm we have the assurance that God hears our prayers, especially our cries – so when we are overwhelmed – cry out to him from the midst of the miry bog, when the gross mud is up past our ankles and we can’t pull it out without losing a shoe.
My beautiful, Godly wife was quick to point out when we discussed this passage that we next see that it is not US that lifts us out of the miry bog…it’s GOD. He will lift us out of the mud and set our feet on the rock. I know, the few times that I had close encounters with the mud in the bog, it was a relief to jump to a rock and land on safe, solid, clean, stable ground.
He puts a NEW song in our mouth, praise to our God – he gives us JOY.
And what do we see the end goal of all this is? Why does HE lift us out of the bog, give us JOY?
So that “Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD”
It is always for his glory, not ours. He doesn’t rescue us for the mud, but in the mud…in the grossness of life when we are sinking and our losing or shoes in gross soggy mud – HE lifts us out so that others can see what he has done for us and come to know him! Others will have seen where we were (in the mud) and now how we have been lifted out, and they will know that it was GOD.
The biggest bog we were lifted out was our own selves – our own sin. God sent Jesus to reconcile us to Him and set our feet on the rock of solid ground of being an adopted son of God, holy and dearly loved, if we have faith in who he was and what he did for us on the cross!
M
Mike Ruel 