together with
Happy Monday, {{first_name | everyone}}!
Yesterday was Father’s Day (shout out to our fellow dads out there)!
We know Father’s Day can bring up mixed emotions depending on the nature of your relationship with your earthly father. No matter your experience with your earthly father, we pray that this week’s verse about the heart of God helps you experience His love for you in a new way.
Let’s dive in!
In today’s email…
❤️ Why the psalmist describes God's love using a father
❓ A question: what does it mean to "fear" a God this tender?
🎵 A song that captures the heart of the verse…
MEMORIZE 🧠
As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.
Psalm 103:13
Want to memorize in your favorite translation? Try our new iPhone app here.
CONTEXT 📕
Psalm 103 has the heading "Of David," and it opens with David talking to himself: "Bless the LORD, O my soul."
He's preaching to his own heart, listing the reasons to worship and praise God (Psalm 103:1–5).
God forgives all your sin.
He heals your diseases.
He redeems your life from the pit.
He satisfies you with good.
A few lines later, David says this about God:
8 The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
If that line sounds familiar, it’s because David is quoting Moses (and because this phrase is repeated throughout Scripture).
David is reaching all the way back to Exodus 34:6, the moment God passes in front of Moses on the mountain and says his own name out loud:
The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
That sentence in Exodus contains the most repeated description of God’s character in all of Scripture. The biblical authors come back to it again and again, and Psalm 103 is one long meditation on it.
David takes God's self-portrait from Sinai and in verse 13 (our memory verse), he reaches for an everyday image to paint the picture of how God relates to us.
Not a king on a throne.
But a father and his children.
This week, we'll be studying and meditating on what it means that God is our Father and that we are his children.
APPLY AND RESPOND 🏃♂
Most of us would say we believe God loves us.
But if we’re honest, fewer of us actually relate to him as if we were children and he was our father. Let’s prepare our hearts this week for God to change that!
📖 Read Psalm 103:1–13 slowly, out loud if you can.
✏️ Write down the picture of "father" you actually carry. Just two or three honest sentences. For some of us that word is warm. For some of us, it has scar tissue. Name what the word “father” brings up for you. We'll bring it back on Thursday, because the verse has something to say to whatever you wrote.
🤝 Share the verse with one person today. Text it to someone with a line like, "Studying this verse for the week after Father's Day. Memorize it with me?" Memorizing Scripture is better with friends.
🙏 Pray
Father, I'll be honest. I don't always picture you as a compassionate dad. Sometimes I imagine you with your arms crossed, disappointed, waiting for me to get it right. This week, retrain my imagination. Show me the God who loves me as his child and who is full of compassion toward me. Let this verse go beyond my head and into my heart. In Jesus' name, amen.
SONG OF THE WEEK 🎵
Pay-it-forward subscribers, enjoy the song we created below to help you memorize the verse of the week!
SCRIPTURE MEMORY SONG OF THE WEEK 🎵
Pay-it-forward subscribers, enjoy the song we created below to help you memorize the verse of the week!
It looks like you don’t currently pay-it-forward. If you’d like to, you can do that here.
FREE SONG OF THE WEEK 🎵
This week's song is almost a sung version of our verse.
The whole song circles the same truth David lands on: God is a good, good Father, and we are loved by him. Let it play while you make breakfast, drive to work or hang with your kids or grandkids. Let it be the soundtrack for the week.
ANSWER KEY ✅
As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.
Psalm 103:13
See you in your inbox tomorrow!
Best,
The Malachi Daily team 🙏
Today’s Contributors
Payton is a husband and father in Vero Beach, FL. He serves as the Email Marketing Manager at Faith Driven Entrepreneur and helps Christians master storytelling through his newsletter, Christian Story Lab.
Kieran is a husband and father of 4 living in NJ. In addition to Malachi Daily, he writes a personal newsletter about the intersection of faith, fatherhood and entrepreneurship.
Go deeper with Malachi Daily
Pay it Forward
Malachi Daily is (and always will be) free thanks to generous readers who choose to support our mission! 🙏
Click here to support the mission for the price of a few coffees/month ☕️
Give us feedback 💬
How was today's newsletter?
Try our iPhone app 📱
Want to go even deeper with memorizing Scripture and learning its context?
Our iPhone app, Within allows you to:
Memorize 1 verse every single week and learn its context through daily devotionals you can read (or listen to)
Memorize any verse you want in your favorite bible translation
Store all of your previously memorized verses in one place (and review them regularly with interactive games)
And much more!
What are the differences between Within and Malachi Daily?
Malachi Daily 📧 | Within 📱 | |
|---|---|---|
Type of tool | Email newsletter | iOS mobile app |
Cost | Free | 7-day free trial, then $5.99/mo or $49.99/year |
# of verses | 2 verses per month as a community | 4 verses per month as a community + unlimited for any verse you want |
Who chooses the verse | We choose | We choose AND you can memorize any verse you want, anytime |
Bible translation(s) | ESV | ESV, NIV, NLT, KJV, and NASB |
Reviewing previously memorized verses | You do this on your own | Use the built-in memory bank |
Spread the Word
