🙏 Psalm 103:13 | Good, Good Father

Happy Friday, {{first_name | everyone}}!

We’ve spent the week studying and meditating on Psalm 103:13. Let’s review what we’ve learned so we can carry it with us and put it into practice.

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Psalm 103:13

Here’s everything we covered this week…

On Monday after Father's Day, we met Psalm 103:13 and saw that David is drawing on God’s own words to describe Himself.

A few verses earlier, Psalm 103:8 reaches back to "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious," the exact words from Exodus 34:6.

This tells us that as David wrote Psalm 103, he was meditating on God's own self-portrait from Sinai spoken to Moses.

On Tuesday, we zoomed in on one word: compassion.

This is talking about a tender mercy God has for us. Like a father who hears his daughter cry out for him, he doesn't stop to ask whether his daughter has earned his help.

He just goes, propelled by deep love and concern that is unaffected by whether she had been “good” or “bad” that day.

That reflex is similar to what David is reaching for to describe God and how he relates to those who fear Him.

On Wednesday, we looked to the original Hebrew.

We learned how racham ("compassion") shares the same root word for rechem (the word for womb), communicating the level of intimacy with which God relates to those who fear him.

We learned the word for father used in Psalm 103:13 (ab), which is a plain, everyday word for "dad" that small children used in ancient Israel.

David could have referred to God as a judge or a commander, but instead, he used father.

And we learned the word yare' (fear), which refers to the reverence a child has for a father he loves and trusts enough to run toward.

Yesterday, we discussed the parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15, where the father "felt compassion, and ran" towards his son.

And finally, we turned our eyes to the cross, where Jesus bought us the ability to cry "Abba! Father!" (Romans 8:15) through his blood.

For those of us who have put our faith in Jesus, this is a verse that reminds us God’s loving posture towards us.

And if you have not put your faith in Christ yet, we invite you to consider taking the step of declaring him the King of your life!

The last move is to let our week’s verse go through you to someone else. You don't have to be a theologian for this. You just need the one sentence you already have memorized.

📲 Send someone the verse today. Here's a text you can copy and paste:

Hey, I’ve been memorizing a verse all week and thought of you: 'As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.' (Psalm 103:13) Whatever kind of week you've had, God's heart toward you is a good Father's. Wanted you to hear that today.

☕ Offer to sit down and walk them through it. If the door opens, grab coffee with them and read Psalm 103 together. Show them Exodus 34:6 and Luke 15:11-20, the father who saw his wayward son on the horizon and ran.

🙏 Pray

Father, thank you for what you’ve taught me this week. Thank you that your heart towards me is that of a loving Father. Thank you that in Jesus, I get to call you Abba. Help me think of you as my Father and relate to you as your child. And give me an opportunity to share this verse with someone I know. Amen.

In case you missed it, here are a few resources to help you dig deeper into our verse and theme this week:

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As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.

Psalm 103:13