📣 Psalm 102:18 | Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus..

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📧 In today’s email…

• 📕 A quick review of what we’ve learned this week

• 👀 Where are you looking?

• ✝️ The hymn I sing to my kids at bedtime

• 🧐 In case you missed it..

 🧠 Memorize

_{see if you know what words go in the blanks}

Let ____ __ _________ ___ _ __________ __ ____,

so ____ _ people ___ __ __ _______ may ______ ___ ____

Psalm 102:18

A review of what we’ve learned 🤔 

Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve learned this week:

Background Context

• Author: anonymous

• Type of Psalm: Lament

  • It is a raw personal prayer with both individual and communal

Passage Context

Remember the description at the beginning of Psalm 102:

A prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord

The first half of Psalm 102 (lament) is a reminder that we are invited and encouraged to pour out our complaints in the presence of the Lord.

We have a God who wants us to bring everything to Him - highs and lows.

We also learned that in verse 12, the author of this prayer transitions from focusing on his problems to focusing on his God.

This is a simple, but profound idea that has the ability to put everything we experience in this life in perspective.

Original Hebrew 🤓 

• The Hebrew word in v18 for ‘written’ is kāṯaḇ (pronounced kah-thav) which means to record, inscribe or engrave.

  • It’s also the same word used in Deuteronomy 6 when the Lord commands the Israelites to write God’s commands on their doorposts.

5 Ways to Record God’s Faithfulness in Your Life

Lastly, we learned a few ways we can pass our faith on to our children, grandchildren and other believers in future generations:

1. ✍️ Keep a spiritual journal: Write down answered prayers, lessons learned, ways you saw God's provision and deliverance in difficult times. Include Bible verses that were particularly meaningful during different seasons.

2. ✉️ Write letters or emails to your children/grandchildren telling the stories of God's faithfulness in your life that you want passed down. Print them out and keep them in a binder.

3. 📹️ Record yourself giving your personal testimony of how you came to faith or pivotal moments when God showed up in a big way. Future generations could watch/listen to this.

4. 💻️ Start a family blog or private social media page where you consistently document how you see God moving and working in your daily life through written posts, photos or video updates.

5. 📕 Write a spiritual memoir or autobiography detailing your walk with Christ - the joys, struggles, miracles and lessons learned over the years. Print copies for family.

💡 Does one of these stand out to you as something the Holy Spirit is prompting you to focus on?

Future generations need your stories of how God has shown up in your life!

Do the family of God a favor - record them and pass them on!

Where Are Your Eyes Looking? 👀 

Consider what Psalm 102:19-20 say and compare it to what Jesus says in the gospel of Luke.

Here’s Psalm 102…

Now, here’s Jesus in Luke:

Because of Jesus, we can have confidence that our suffering is not meaningless.

He came and paid our debt, setting us free from sin —

— and we have hope that all things will be restored when He returns and His kingdom floods the earth!

Every night at bedtime, I sing this hymn to my two oldest kids:

As disciples of Jesus, we are in constant need of reminding to fix our eyes on Him.

In Matthew 6, Jesus says “The eye is the lamp of the body.”

Where we focus our “eyes” and attention will impact the way we perceive the world and how we interact with others.

When we focus on our problems only and turn our gaze inward, obsessed with “the self,” we do not flourish.

We would stay stuck in the first half of Psalm 102, in despair and hopelessness.

We become selfish, covetous and dissatisfied.

But when we bring our complaints to God, and then shift our eyes to look at Jesus, the suffering servant on the cross —

— it doesn’t make our problems disappear, but it helps us see our suffering through the lens of the story of which we are a part.

Practice: Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus 👀 

As you head into the weekend (in addition to documenting your faith journey for future generations), bring your complaints and the details of your sufferings to God.

But don’t stay there.

Remember to turn your eyes upon Jesus.

And remember that Jesus is no longer on the cross, but that He is risen and alive!

In Case You Missed It 👀 

In case you missed it, here are some resources to help you dive deeper into this week’s memory verse:

• 📹️ Bible Project: Overview of the Psalms (link)

• 🎙️ Sermon by Jon Tyson on The Way of Remembrance (link)

• 📚️ Spurgeon and the Psalms: The Book of Psalms with Devotions from Charles Spurgeon (link)

• 📚️ The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms by Tim and Kathy Keller (link)

• 🎵 The Blessing by Elevation Worship & Kari Jobe (Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Music)

Answer key ✅ 

Let this be recorded for a generation to come,

so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord

Psalm 102:18

How did you do? 💡