NIV Application Bible Podcast: Episode 14 (Psalm 139)

• We have a God who never looks away from us. You will never see his back. He loves us. Welcome back to the NIV Application Bible podcast. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We really can’t overstate our gratitude. We have we have just loved taken this journey through this love story we call the Bible with you.
• And we’ve come to what may be my favorite pit stop. Although I say that about all 66 books in the Bible, even Leviticus, I just love all of them. I mean, there’s redemption on every page. But if I had a favorite book, it would probably be the psalter. Uh that’s just a fancy name for the Psalms.
• Those 150 psalms, uh in the middle of our Bibles, uh they were all originally written as songs. S O N Gs. So I kind of think of this as God’s favorite tunes list. If if he was doing a a you know just a song list and he was having a dinner party it would be these 150 songs. As a matter of fact some churches ancient churches and a few now this was the very first himnil.
• John Calvin calls the psalms an anatomy of all parts of the soul because they record the the weeping and the dancing of God’s people. These aren’t just perky poems. As a matter of fact, the majority of the psalms, the the largest portion of the psalms deal with difficult issues, with with sad stuff. And the the psalm that I love the most of all 150 in this book is Psalm 139.
• I’ve loved it since I was a kid, but it took on fresh life for me recently. I was helping a group here in Nashville and we were delivering meals to people who um had no place to stay on Thanksgiving a couple of years ago and I was with a friend of mine who had been homeless before she got involved in this ministry and we had put a ton of meals in the back of my car because I was driving an SUV and she said, “Lisa, you drive and I’ll tell you where to go because I still have friends who live under bridges who who may not even have kind of the the emot emotional
• strength day on Thanksgiving to go to one of the places where they know that they could stand in line, get a hot meal. And I was like, “Okay.” So, we’re driving in downtown Nashville and I see this fella that I’m just sure um probably doesn’t have a lot of money. He he absolutely looks like he uh lives outdoors.
• And so, I humped my car up on the curb. I almost run him over. I was so excited. And and you know, our goal wasn’t just to give him a meal. It was to actually share a conversation, to to have fellowship, to actually eat with them and maybe get to the point of talking about how much Jesus loves them. So, I pull up next to this guy who’s young, 19, 20 years old, and I said, “Hey, sir.
• I I don’t know if you’re hungry today, but we’ve got some extra food, and we’d love to share it with you.” And he was so offended. And then he told me he was actually a student at Vanderbilt, and he was walking to meet his parents who were in town for Thanksgiving. I thought, “Well, brother, I’m sorry. You were dressed so trashy.
• I was just sure that you were poor.” So, my friend Sabrina goes, “Lisa, you don’t get to pick anymore. You really can’t pick the people we’re trying to deliver meals to.” And so, she picked the next, we actually ended up handing out almost a hundred meals. We had so many amazing conversations.
• We actually met with one of her former drug dealers, got to sit with him. It was just incredible. The very last meal of the day, sun was starting to set. Thanksgiving late afternoon and we pull up in this industrial area in downtown Nashville and another fella had told us if you’ll go up to that building outside the building there’s a little half concrete wall and a friend of mine his name is Cricut that’s where he stays and so we pull up and sure enough there’s this precious young man and he lives in that little concrete cubby and we got to
• share a meal with him and it was just a really really sweet time and of course I didn’t think I’d ever see cricket again. But a week later, I ended up right back in that same area of downtown Nashville that I don’t normally frequent because I’d gotten lost. And I’m driving around looking at street signs.