Today...

Psalm 95 is a wonderful psalm. For many years, Anglicans used to recite Psalm 95 every morning of every day. Here's how it goes:

1 Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.

3 For the LORD is the great God,
the great King above all gods.

4 In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.

5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.

6 Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;

7 for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.

- Psalm 95:1-7

It starts out with a call to worship God, to sing for joy to the Lord. This is every Christian's duty and privilege. But that is not the reason why Psalm 95 was incorporated into everyday prayers. The important bit comes at the end.

Today, if you hear his voice,

8 do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
as you did that day at Massah in the desert,

9 where your fathers tested and tried me,
though they had seen what I did.

10 For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they have not known my ways."

11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
"They shall never enter my rest."

- Psalm 95:7-11

Sometimes when I read the Bible, my heart is hard; I do not want to hear, because hearing God's word often means I should make some change in the way that I live my life, and that is too hard. Other times my heart is merely numb, or apathetic. Either way, I miss out on entering God's rest, the peace and comfort that God is offering me... or perhaps I remain at peace and comfortable when God wants me to act!

I believe that the "Today" of verse 7 is important. It is easy to say to ourselves, "I will deal with this sin, or that injustice, tomorrow." But God calls us to act today. The letter to the Hebrews makes this abundantly clear. After quoting Psalm 95, the writer goes on:

12See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

- Hebrews 3:12-13

We must encourage one another daily in our walk with God - this is why Psalm 95 was included into the daily prayer for Anglicans of old.

My prayer for myself and for you is that today, when we hear God's voice, we would be stirred into action, and that we would allow him to transform us. I want to be a man after God's own heart, like David, rather than a man of hard heart like Pharaoh. And so, I pray, we will enter into God's rest.

Children of God

One of the great gospel truths is that we have been adopted as God's children, his heirs together with Christ.

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.

- Romans 8:15-16

What does it mean to be a child of God?

Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

- Romans 8:17

J. I. Packer explains what it means to "share in [Christ's] sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory":

In this world, royal children have to undergo extra training and discipline, which other children escape, in order to fit them for their high destiny. It is the same with the children of the King of Kings. The clue to understanding all his dealings with them is to remember that throughout his life he is training them for what awaits them, and chiselling them into the image of Christ.

- J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Hodder & Stoughton, 2004) p. 251.

This chiselling may well be painful, but it is necessary for us if we are to attain to our "high destiny" as children of God.