Pastor Fredo Ramos: For whatever reason, I have always struggled to pray. And so, as this new year begins and as many of you think about new routines that you wanna give yourself to, especially for those of you who follow Jesus, I wanna invite you to learn to pray the Psalms with us. It's a practice I picked up years ago that really saved, my ability to learn to pray, to speak to God honestly about how I was feeling and what I was thinking. And so every single day on sandalschurch.tv on YouTube, we're gonna be releasing, praying the Psalms, a psalm a day. We started in January 1st and every day you're gonna get a new psalm, but the opportunity to read the psalm with us, to reflect on a phrase, and then to respond to God in prayer, how to pray through the psalms.
This has been a gift to me in my own journey with Jesus. I pray that it's a gift to you and so would you join us. Pray some peace. We continue to pray through the Psalms. We come now to Psalm 29 verse 1.
Honor the Lord, you heavenly beings. Honor the Lord for his glory and strength. Honor the Lord for the glory of his name, and worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. The voice of the Lord echoes above the sea. The God of glory thunders.
The Lord thunders over the mighty sea. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord splits the mighty cedars. The Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon's mountains skip like a calf. He makes Mount Hermon leap like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord strikes with bolts of lightning. The voice of the Lord makes the barren wilderness quake. The the lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the lord twists mighty oaks and strips the forest bare. In his temple, everyone shouts glory. The lord rules over the floodwaters. The lord reigns as king forever. The Lord gives his people strength.
The Lord blesses them with peace. By way of reflection, notice how often we see the phrase the Lord or Yahweh, the Lord, the Lord. In other words, this psalm is constantly a prayer that redirects us back to God and to his voice, specifically. We're told there and invited in verses 1 and 2 to honor the Lord and then we we hear why in terms of what his voice is doing. His voice rules over the seas which, again, keep in mind, in this time and day and age, would have been viewed as a very chaotic, powerful force in the physical world.
The oceans were chaotic and and so the fact that Jesus's voice or really the Lord's voice reigns over it is a way to say, man, we serve a God who's even, mightier than than that which is chaotic and then that which can overpower us so easily. We're told the voice of the Lord shatters, trees and cedars. The the voice of the Lord can cause an earthquake. But the voice of the Lord also gives life, we're told. It can only it it can actually strip, not only strip the forest bare, but it also can cause life for animals.
Right? And so, by by way of invitation and prayer, we think today about whose voice will we hear and will our hearts consider all of what God's voice can do and will we still tune him out because we're just too distracted elsewhere. And so, can we come to a humble place now where we can be real about the fact that other voices are speaking to us? Our own voice. The voice of our guilt, the voice of our shame, the voice of our boss, the voice of our kids, the voice of our circumstances.
None of them compare to the voice of the Lord and what he has to say to us. And so, Jesus, we invite you now, by the power of your Holy Spirit, would you soften our hearts and open our ears so that we might hear this mighty, wonderful, glorious voice of the Lord speak to us, as we think about all of what your voice can do, would you now be at work in our lives? And would our would our ears hear you and be transformed by what you say to us? Jesus, you are the voice that calm the waters, you are the voice that raised the dead, you are the voice that healed the sick, and so would we hear your voice today, not harden our hearts, but be transformed to follow you. We pray these things in your name.
Amen.