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2 Samuel 22:7 / Psalm 18:6 (the same verse in 2 places)
In my distress I called upon the Lord,
And cried to my God for help;
He heard my voice out of His temple,
And my cry for help before Him came into His ears..
Psalm 34:4-6
4 I sought the Lord, and He answered me,
And delivered me from all my fears.
5 They looked to Him and were radiant,
And their faces will never be ashamed.
6 This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him
And saved him out of all his troubles..
When things are going “well”, our natural inclination is to forget God, to not think that we need Him. We naturally tend to take His goodness for granted. An analogy would be teenagers that simply assume that their parents’ housing, food, access to a car, etc will be there, without really having an interest in spending time with their parents – they just use their parents’ stuff to have a good time, without caring much about their relationship with their parents.
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We tend to seek answers. God wants us to seek Him, because HE is the answer
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Matthew 11:28-30
28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is [b]easy and My burden is light.”
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Answers are part of it, but it starts with the relationship. We seek Him, bring our problems to Him, and then He walks us through it, and walks through it with Him. And as He guides, directs, counsels, and comforts us, answers come out of the process.
Back to the example of the parents with their teenager…….. wise and loving parents will understand that free resources with no strings attached is ultimately harmful to the teenager. So, they will constantly work to make sure that their “goodness” to their teenager is combined with proper discipline and boundaries.
While dealing with a narcissist is highly painful, God sometimes will lovingly allow us to be “forced” to wrestle with one in order to motivate us toward HIM, knowing that the relationship with Him is ultimately the best and most important thing for us.
An excellent devotional from John Piper underscores this.
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How Well Do You Know God? (John Piper)
“Behold, God is great, and we know him not; the number of his years is unsearchable.” (Job 36:26)
It is impossible to know God too well.
He is the most important person who exists. And this is because he made all others, and any importance they have is owing to him.
Any strength or intelligence or skill or beauty they have comes from him. On every scale of excellence, he is infinitely greater than the best person you ever knew or ever heard of.
Being infinite, he is inexhaustibly interesting. It is impossible, therefore, that God be boring. His continual demonstration of the most intelligent and interesting actions is volcanic.
As the source of every good pleasure, he himself pleases fully and finally. If that’s not how we experience him, we are either dead or sleeping.
It is therefore astonishing how little effort is put into knowing God.
It’s as though the President of the United States came to live with you for a month, and you only said hello in passing every day or so. Or as if you were flown at the speed of light for a couple of hours around the sun and the solar system, and instead of looking out the window, you played a computer game. Or as if you were invited to watch the best actors, singers, athletes, inventors, and scholars perform their best, but you declined to go so you could watch the TV season’s final soap.
Let us pray that our infinitely great God would open our eyes and hearts to see him and seek to know him more.
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Hebrews 11:6
6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
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- Narcissism is the modern colloquial term for what the Bible calls “insolent pride” – see here
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Putting “Biblical Perspectives On Narcissism” Into Perspective