Let us look
again to the great gold mine of truth we call the Psalms. We are
interested in Psalm 29:1-2 which says,
“Give unto
the LORD, O ye mighty, give unto the LORD glory and strength. Give
unto thee LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the
beauty of holiness.”
It is in this Psalm
that David describes for us the progressional movement of a
thunderstorm. This is probably one of the most awful and scary acts
of nature. An old writer by the name of Baalbek described a
thunderstorm of Jerusalem like this, “I was over taken by a
storm, as if the flood gates of heaven had burst: it came on in a
moment and raged with a power which suggested the end of the world.
Solemn darkness covered the earth: the rain descended in torrents,
and sweeping down the mountain side, became by the fearful power of
the storm transmuted into a thick cloud of fog.”
These storms
are but a picture of the spiritual storms that come suddenly and
without warning in the life of God’s people. Our Lord used storms
in Matthew 7:27 to reveal the foundations that the wise and foolish
man had built upon. Oh how the storms of life will reveal to us
what we really are spiritually.
In verses 1 and 2 we
are confronted with the ‘Pre-Storm Practice of Life’. We are
commanded to “Give unto the LORD,” Giving is often a hard
principle to learn. We do not learn what wealth we have until a
storm comes along and sweeps away all we have. Many are prone to
not give out of their abundance but only out of their poverty. The
word ‘give’ used in verses 1and2 means to bring before, to
ascribe to, or to acknowledge with. The word ‘mighty’ speaks
of the Sons of God. It could refer to the redeemed or to angelic
creatures. We are commanded to give Him ‘glory’. The word ‘glory’
means weighty, abounding, numerous times of honor. Oh let us learn
to glorify Him in the good weather of life as well as the storms.
The word ‘strength’ in verse 1 is the word for loud words of
praise. Let us praise Him when skies are blue as well as when the
skies are filled with storm clouds. The one to whom we are to give
our glory and strength is the ‘LORD’.
He is the great ‘I
Am’ or the God who becomes. One may ask what does God become?
We can answer that with a question. What do you need? He becomes
all that we need in times of storms or in days of clear weather.
We are
commanded to give glory to His name in verse 2. David tells us in
Psalm 148 that His name is the only excellent thing in all of heaven
and earth. How the mention of His lovely name gives us peace in the
midst of our storm.
There is a name I
love to hear, I love to sing its worth. It sounds like music to my
ear, the sweetest name on earth. O how I love Jesus. Jesus is the
sweetest name I know and He’s just the same as His lovely name and
that’s the reason why I love Him so; for Jesus is the sweetest name
I know.
We are commanded to
“worship…in the beauty of holiness.” A word study of this
phrase tells us to prostrate ourselves because of the ornament of
His magnified presence in His hallowed sanctuary.
In our storms or in
our days of clear weather let us be found worshipping Him by
prostrating ourselves before Him and giving Him the weighty honor
due to His name. Learning to worship in our storms will make us
sovereign conscious and not storm conscious.
