Singing Psalm 14 for the way to sincere friendship
- Karen Wallace
- Mar 30, 2022
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 29
Singing Psalm 14 to move from wooden to sincere friendship
When sincere friendship is sought primarily in mind
When God looks down, does he see someone checking up on you to make sure you are performing the expected obligations? Are you going through the motions, as if you can unhinge your emotions from your mind even as you talk with God, skim his word, and sing his words back to him?
Can you really separate your heart from the action as if all the Lord wants from you is to love him with all your distracted mind? This creates distance between you and those who are attempting to prod you along in this limited pursuit, not to mention grieving the Holy Spirit as you have boiled God down into his outward laws and his people into a police force.
Move from chaotic to sincere friendship
When sincere friendship is sought primarily in emotion
On the other side of things, if you are not engaging with God in your mind, and you let loose emotionally, you are unhinging your emotions from your reason, separating yourself from others, frightening them with outbursts, lost in confusion, tangled in chaos that is a challenge for anyone to make sense of. Therefore, you will either be taken advantage of by those who see you as an easy target to exploit or avoided by those who are more reasonable and who might even care but don’t know where to begin to help.
Discern a better way to seek sincere friendship
All of you, every aspect of you, is required when pursuing sincere friendship
Both imbalances cut you off from the dependent relationship you were created to have with God who intricately made you for himself. If you know you wouldn’t like these kinds of relationships, if you wouldn’t be satisfied with a relationship that only engages your mind or only pursues your feelings, or only wants to be involved with one part of you, what makes you think that God would? Do you want to be used in this way in your relationships? Do you think God wants to be used in this way in your relationship with him?
What does ‘the narrow way’ mean in sincere friendship?
The narrow way refers to depending on the Lord only and not looking elsewhere for your security. It does not mean that you are to relate to him narrowly, as if you could put him in a box and take him out on the occasions when you perceive trouble. It also does not mean that you relate to him one-dimensionally but rather, you share every dimension of who you are with him alone.
Realize that the Lord seeks you in sincere friendship
Even as you mourn, the Lord woos you to sincere friendship
Yet the Lord woos you to himself with thoughts that move you to think about how you would like to be pursued in either of these ways. “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.” Singing these thoughts softens your heart, doesn’t it?
These thoughts motivate your mind to think of how you can show your appreciation and affection for the one who promises to be with you in all the ups and downs, who gives you every good thing, who promises to make his home with you now and to prepare a place for you with him forever if you will only take him at his sure word.
You will mourn the ways that you have relied on other things to sustain you rather than the only one who has never let you down to pursue other loves. You mourn relying on other things not just because they have failed you but because you are rejecting God, the only one who offers perfectly sincere friendship.
And you are blessed in this mourning because it draws you out of hiding and into his gracious, merciful, forgiving presence where you unreservedly praise him for his steadfast love, his faithfulness, his loving kindness, and his tender mercies toward you.
Although God knows your adulterous past, he pursues you and lets you know that “your Maker is your husband.” He heals you of your unfaithfulness. No one ever loved you like he does. How can you respond with anything less than your best love, your whole heart, your whole mind, all your strength, with all your inner being (your soul), with your time both quantity and quality, and with your utmost attention?
Singing Psalm 14 for the way to sincere friendship
You want to be a sincere friend to one is a sincere friend to you. You acknowledge the presence of such a one. Singing Psalm 14 juxtaposes with one who repays sincere friendship with not only not acknowledging his presence but with absolute rejection of his existence. This strikes a chord within you as wrong and moves you to take a course as far from it as you can: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” A wise one starts out saying, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” This is soon followed by “I have seen the Lord.”
March 30, 2022
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Heart ♥️ reflection
January 17, 2025
“Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” ~ 2 Corinthians 1:9
Question: How does God use hardship to teach me how to rely on and trust him and not myself?
Heart reflection: When God makes you wait for his provision, he is providing something greater for you than food and raiment, the things that you both know you need. If life is primarily about your physical life, then providing for that would be all that is needed. But if life is about relationships, primarily your friendship with your creator, then more is needed. If during the wait for physical provisions you either lie or steal or complain bitterly about waiting, you display that you don’t trust him and would go around him as if he didn’t exist to satisfy yourself if you at all could. Jacob and Rebekah schemed to make sure God’s promise would be fulfilled instead of trusting God to fulfill it. Patiently waiting for God is pleasing to him. Yet, the Lord worked through their sin showing himself faithful in spite of them taking matters into their own hands. God eventually brought Jacob from anxious and self-serving to thankful and trusting. Jacob acknowledged in his last years that God has been with him providing for him wherever he has gone. His attitude change was accompanied by a name change to Israel which means “he strives with God.” Job learned to trust God’s care for him through intense suffering and loss. Joseph trusted God was with him in family rejection, false accusations, and prison. Jesus came to put a crowning finish to the lesson of trusting God and doing what pleases the Father. He waited through a time of being forsaken by him so we would be accepted. He is Immanuel, God with us, who comes through for his sheep every time as a sincere friend whether we at first stray and stumble or steadfastly obey and wait for his salvation.
“From Zion, send salvation,
And help to Isr’el bring!
The LORD restores His captives:
Let Jacob—Isr’el—sing!” ~ Psalm 14:7
************ The Psalms—Q&A
“The Lord looks down from heaven
Upon the human race:
Has anyone shown wisdom,
Does any seek God‘s face?” ~ Psalm 14:2
How can singing Psalm 14 help me grow in my affection for God and in my connection with others?
“If you have a boss who coaches you, identifies your strengths, demonstrates respect, leads with humility and fuels your growth - you’ve won the boss lottery. If you’re not there yet - don’t settle - find it.”*
Surrounded by sinners, it’s easier to dig out of a pit of dark deceit into the light of Jesus than to have it from the beginning and be deceived into believing that the light of Jesus is darkness. In the former, you learn the truth after you were presented at first with a lie. In the latter, you reject the truth that was presented to you at first, deceived that it’s a lie. You then search for something, anything else. Yet nothing else will satisfy.
Can I say: “Jesus is my boss. I am vulnerable with him.** I see my need for him, the true light and living water. I have sought and found him.”?
“Have all of them no knowledge
Whose deeds are so abhorred?
Like bread they eat my people,
And call not on the Lord.” ~ Psalm 14:4
Engage and grow together!
“Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another.” ~ Proverbs 27:17
Friday, July 4, 2025
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