Our Pride is in the Lord

 Psalms 20; II Corinthians 5:6-17

The Psalmist, David, in Psalms 20 is confident that the Lord will hear and answer prayer. This is a prayer for Israel’s king for victory on the battlefield. David knows that the Lord will help his anointed – the anointed king. He tells how many trust in weapons of warfare – chariots and horses –other kings boasting of their power in how many they have. Yet the Israelites and their king take pride in the name of the Lord our God. This trust in God leads him to pray that God grant him his heart’s desire and fulfill all his plans.

Paul talks about his confidence in the Lord in II Corinthians 5. He too writes in many of his writings about boasting in the Lord. He talks to the Corinthians being able to boast about him and the apostles in able for them to answer those who boast in outward appearances but not in the heart. Paul and the apostles are not what the world would find fashionable or outwardly attractive. The Corinthians, however, will boast about Paul and the apostle’s hearts for God and how they no longer live for themselves like those who boast about their appearance but for Christ the one who for their sakes died and was raised.

He talks about seeing people in a whole new point of view – not from the human one which looks only at appearances. This newness comes to those who are in Christ – they have become a new creation delivered from the death of sin. Everything old – things we found pride in have passed away. New things have come into being – our pride being in the Lord.

God has always looked onto the heart. In I Samuel when Samuel passes up all of Jesse’s tall sons to appoint for the kingship he ends up anointing the young shepherd boy David. God directed Samuel to him saying mortals look on appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. The heart of grownup David is seen in his confidence that the Lord will answer the king’s prayers in this Psalm he later wrote. May we like him take our pride in the name of the Lord. Amen.

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