“Lord, I have chosen you alone as my inheritance.
You are my prize, my pleasure, and my portion.
I leave my destiny and it’s timing in your hands.”
Psalm 16:5, Passion
https://davidleemartin.com/my-prize-and-my-pleasure-psalm-16-praying-the-psalms/
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Well, I am super glad to be here this morning just to take some time to share from my heart. Today, I really want to actually, rather than sharing about something practical, although this is actually very practical when you actually put it into practice. A while ago I spent a great deal of time in the Book of Psalms and I really enjoy working with different versions of the Bible. I generally will take a a version of the Bible as my kind of ground text for a year and I change that up most years Jetman.
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I keep swinging back around to the old King James, which is a firm favourite of mine, to be honest. At the moment I’m reading the amplified. But last year I spent a lot of time or certainly a good season of time in a quite a new version of the New Testament called The Passion Translation. Now, I absolutely love it. Do you mean I do. I really enjoyed it. I don’t think I would necessarily call it a translation, more a paraphrase in some ways, because there’s a quite an element of interpretation of the scriptures in there alongside kind of the the main text.
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It’s not word for word necessarily. Well, at least not not in my opinion. Nevertheless, it is an amazing work of grace that the writer did. I think it was a guy, Brian Simmons, and but in the Book of Psalms particularly, is so rich in there and so am I was reading Psalm 16. I wrote this quite a while ago, but I’ve kind of been brought back to my remembrance and Psalm 16, verse five says, Lord, I have chosen you alone as my inheritance.
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You are my prize, my pleasure and my portion. And I leave my destiny and its timing in your hands. I’m going to read that again just because it’s so good. Man Lord, I have chosen you alone as my inheritance. You are my prize. My pleasure. And I hang on. I can bring it up here. You are my prize, my pleasure and my portion and I leave my destiny and its timing in your hands. Psalm 16:5 in the passion translation.
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Such a powerful verse and so rich with kind of so rich with that invitation. I was going to say revelation and that’s there too. But actually I, I read this as an invitation into a deeper place of intimate communion with the father and a deeper place of communion with the Holy Holy Spirit over this week. Why this kind of came to my mind is over this week. I know that the idea of the Lord being my portion kept coming back to me again and again and again.
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The Lord is my portion, the Lord is my portion. And I’m like thinking, you know, when when words come, I don’t want to just pass over them. I want them to I want to kind of ruminate on them, if that’s the right word. I want to I want them to marinate in my inner man. I want to if something is being brought to your remembrance. You know, when Jesus sent the Holy Spirit, he said, I’m sending the Holy Spirit and he will bring to your remembrance everything that I’ve said.
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Okay, Jesus is speaking all the time. And the Holy Spirit is here bringing to our remembrance the things that Jesus either has spoken or the things that he is speaking. Now he brings it to our consciousness. Yea. And so this word, the Lord is my portion, the Lord is my portion kept kind of bubbling up in the midst of other conversations and and and then I remember disarm. I remember this, this verse here I’ve chosen you alone is my inheritance.
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You are my prize, my pleasure. And my portion. And then there just this beautiful committal of his future. Yea I leave my destiny and its timing in your hands. You know, when Jesus died on the cross, he talks about God being like our inheritance. When Jesus died on the cross, he left his last will and testament. You know, when someone dies, that’s when there will comes into force. So Jesus died on the cross.
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It brings his testimony, it brings his last will and testament into force here, which he has given to us. And then he rises from the dead to become the administrator of that will to ensure that it is fulfilled and that what has been promised and what has been bequeathed to his people actually gets into their hands and say he’s both the he’s both the giver. Yeah, he’s both the giver and the gift. He’s the one who died and rose again.
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He’s the one who left the inheritance and then rose again to ensure that that inheritance that that will is enforced and comes to pass and that we all get what what Jesus is paid for. And, you know, and that is that’s a price. A pleasure. And a portion of God’s abundance and God’s God’s in. God’s limitless provision and, you know, as members of his family, we are kind of recipients of that will, you know. And the thing is, he is.
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He chose us before we chose him, he knew us before we knew him, and so we can come to him without any fear of rejection. It’s not like we’re coming. We like we choose. We think, oh, man, I’m going to I’m going to become a Christian. I’m going to follow Jesus. And then we come crawling on our knees and to kind of beg that he would allow us to follow him. No, he has already chosen us.
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He has already reached out. And an eternity before we even knew of him, he reached out and he said, I want that one. I want that one. I choose that one. He chose you before you chose him. And so when we come to him, we can come with absolutely no fear of rejection whatsoever. We can come with no concern that we will not be embraced, that that his arms will not swing around us and draw us to himself.
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And in that grace, he becomes like this wonderful prise. And again, that is just a simple reflection of the fact that he saw us in the same way he was like the man who went to the field, found the treasure, sold everything, gave everything and and and purchased that field. He purchased that field. He purchased the field of your heart. He purchased you. He paid the full price so he could bring you out of the dirt, so he could pull you out of the mud and the mire and he could display you to the world.
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And it’s just such a beautiful picture of the goodness and the grace of God. And and we receive this just by faith. We receive this amazing kind of invitation simply by faith. It’s not some, like, complex transaction. We don’t have to kind of perform some spiritual gymnastics to prove that we’re worthy of it. It really is just a simple open hand. Yeah, empty of self and ready to receive. That is the only complication. That’s the only qualification.
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You know, sometimes we hold onto things don’t we were holding on to our idea of how things should be, how God should work, how we should whatever, you know, how the world should kind of roll. And we’re holding onto these things like false securities and different ways of thinking. We’re holding on thinking all day. If I if only it could be like this, then. But really, you can’t receive while you’re while your hands are closed and clamp clasped and sometimes while holding onto things that we believe are going to give us security.
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But this past year has proven beyond any shadow of doubt that there’s very little security, you know, even in the things that we felt and thought and seemed absolutely solid. They’re just being shaken. And I’m like, if we keep holding on, we’re going to shake with them and sometimes it’s really a matter of just opening our hands and letting go maybe of some of the things that have disappointed us or some of the fears that we have, some of the concerns that we have for maybe even our future.
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And to remember this incredible promise here from Psalm 16. And I just love that, that, you know, when when we recognise that he is our inheritance, when we recognise that, like, the bottom line is abundance, you know, we can. Money comes, money goes. Time is just spent. Yeah, well, the two two precious things that we kind of rely on so much, we’ve only got so much time, we’ve only got so much money or whatever.
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Both of them are spilling through our fingers like like sand. You know, sometimes we may have a lot, sometimes we may have little, but God is our bottom line abundance, abundance, abundance, abundance, abundance, abundance, provision, inheritance is the bottom line, whatever whatever situation we find ourselves in, in life, because we have this promise. We have this will we have this inheritance that’s been granted to us purely by grace. And in that, the Psalmist says, I leave my destiny.
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And it’s timing in your hands and sometimes, I mean, I don’t know about you, but certainly this is very true for Larna and I sometimes it can seem like this timing in his hands thing is a little kind of stretched out. Sometimes it can seem like, well, when, Lord, when, when, when. But we need to trust enough to leave the timing. In his hands to leave the timing of destiny, the timing of a breakthrough, the timing of our liberation, the timing of that provision, the timing of whatever it is we are looking for, whatever it is we’re believing for the time of the timing of it can be securely left in the hands.
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Of the one that we serve. And say today, father, in the name of Jesus, I just really want to thank you, Lord, and I want to cease from rushing and running here and there. I want to leave my destiny and its timing in your care, Lord. Your plans are a pleasure to us. Your plans and you, father are our portion, and I thank you, God, that we step into an eternal mindset and and an eternal perspective when we come into your presence.
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And so, Lord, I just worship you, I worship your name, I glorify you unashamedly, you know, like I’m like Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. If there’s any if there’s any badge that I wear, it would have your name on it, Lord. And like, you know, I’m going to hide behind your perfection, Lord.
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And not try and display any of my own, because there’s not too much to be found there once you scratch below the surface. But Lord, in you. Hidden in you. Is everything, God, that we could ever want, everything we could ever need. Lord and I thank you, Father, that you are leading us in paths that are really prepared for us and are peppered with delight and surprise with every step in Jesus name. Well, thanks for listening.
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Hopefully it’s been an encouragement to you today. If you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidleemartin.com. Have a great day.
