“Praise” Coaching–Part 6: Satisfied
“Bless the Lord O my soul, and forget not all his benefits…who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.”
God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.
I must confess that when people in various gatherings would want to shout this as a “call and response,” I wasn’t a fan. It seemed too trite. And it was especially inappropriate when some well-meaning person would try to get people to say it in a moment of sadness or crisis. It was a truth that didn’t help in the moment, at least as it was being promoted.
I still feel that way about the call and response, but if we take the phrase out of that setting and context and give it its theological meaning, it reflects something profound and comforting, and in Psalm 103, hopeful.
God is good. His goodness is not a “gradation” of positive, like “good,” or “better,” or “best.” It isn’t a lesser positive, like being “good” but not “great.”
His is an absolute good–everything he does is good–positive, without any mixture of evil. And he always does “good” because his nature is wholly good. That is the contrast that exists; God is totally “good”–and is the only one who is.
Sadly, because we are not wholly good, we don’t always do good things. Even worse, we can’t always see the good in what God does, and we don’t always desire the good that we should.
This “benefit” that we are remembering here has to do with the work he is (and must be) doing in us to make us more and more what he designed us to be. In a real sense, this final blessing summarizes all he is continually doing, including the previous blessings. He is pouring out goodness upon us, helping us see it, and causing us to be able to embrace it for the good it really is–making it satisfying to us.
“If only I had… [fill in the blank].” If you can fill it in at all, there is a sense in which there is some level of dissatisfaction in your life–something is lacking that would make things better with its arrival.
Now, of course this life has lacks and losses that we will feel–sometimes intensely. Right now my life feels a few of them. They don’t feel good, but more telling, they don’t seem to be “good” poured out upon me, but only loss.
But my God is the infinite God in every way. And he is good–absolutely. That means that, from his perspective the current pains and losses–along with all the blessings I am experiencing at the same time–are the necessary means to bring his good for me into my life.
And so, when I don’t see something he has brought to me as good, that doesn’t mean it isn’t ultimately good even if it is a truly bad circumstance and even if it involves evil being done to us (we covered this ground earlier in the blog in talking about Joseph’s experience and that it takes time to get to this point). Faith in God’s lovingkindness (discussed in the last post) means the ultimate result of all that comes my way as God’s child is achieving good.
That reassurance, along with the recognition that may come sooner of the more obvious blessings of the Lord, leads to satisfaction. Mick Jagger couldn’t “get no satisfaction” in the old classic, but we can. I can look at what I have and say, “God, you have decided that what I need is to have what I have in this moment.” And when hard things come our way, we can ask God to give us the faith to believe that this will yield good in us. I don’t know how long it took him to arrive at this kind of heart attitude, but I love Matthew Henry’s observation in his diary when he was robbed. He wrote this prayer:
“I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed.”
Now there is an attitude that allows for satisfaction in God’s goodness!
But note that this satisfaction brings us to a concluding statement that captures the result of having received and then remembered these benefits. Remembering these benefits refreshes us and allows us to be strengthened: “so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” This idea of renewed strength, like when you were younger, is another familiar theme in Scripture. Isaiah’s famous statement in chapter 40 expands on it:
“…but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:31).”
“Soaring with the eagles” is a picturesque way to refer to real success in life, and we still refer to “feeling like a kid again when excessively happy. Moses and Caleb were examples of men that God kept strong into old age. This idea is one that speaks of renewal that is powerful.
Obviously, it can be physical. There are times when our ability to receive and rejoice in God’s goodness to us makes us feel more energetic. But it can also be mental, or attitudinal. I cannot tell you the number of times that I have been blessed by older people whose rejoicing in God’s goodness has them excited, looking ahead, and encouraging others.
And it can be eternal. I don’t know if those who die after long illness in their 90s hope to open their eyes in the presence of the Lord in the final resurrection and find a golden walker waiting for them for all eternity. Don’t get me wrong–I’ll take heaven in any condition I find myself, but if sin is undone in the resurrection, then our new, glorified bodies will be at the peak of perfection for us. Since we are recognizable, we will be the perfect us. It will be a case of perfect and final renewal of our “youthful” strength.
We have incredible blessing from our Lord that never run out. But I’m thankful for this section of Psalm 103 that reminds me of those benefits I should never forget and can be the foundation for continuing praise.
