Psalms 46: 1 - 7 TPT God, you’re such a safe and powerful place to find refuge! You’re a proven help in time of trouble— more than enough and always available whenever I need you.
So we will never fear even if every structure of support were to crumble away. We will not fear even when the earthquakes and shakes, moving mountains and casting them into the sea.
For the raging roar of stormy winds and crashing waves cannot erode our faith in you. Pause in his presence
God has a constantly flowing river whose sparkling streams bring joy and delight to his people. His river flows right through the city of God Most High, into his holy dwelling places.
God is in the midst of his city, secure and never shaken. At daybreak his help will be seen with the appearing of the dawn.
When the nations are in uproar with their tottering kingdoms, God simply raises his voice and the earth begins to disintegrate before him.
Here he comes! The Commander! The mighty Lord of Angel Armies is on our side. The God of Jacob fights for us! Pause in his presence
New episodes every Tuesday!
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Psalms 46: 1 - 7 TPT God, you’re such a safe and powerful place to find refuge! You’re a proven help in time of trouble— more than enough and always available whenever I need you.
So we will never fear even if every structure of support were to crumble away. We will not fear even when the earthquakes and shakes, moving mountains and casting them into the sea.
For the raging roar of stormy winds and crashing waves cannot erode our faith in you. Pause in his presence
God has a constantly flowing river whose sparkling streams bring joy and delight to his people. His river flows right through the city of God Most High, into his holy dwelling places.
God is in the midst of his city, secure and never shaken. At daybreak his help will be seen with the appearing of the dawn.
When the nations are in uproar with their tottering kingdoms, God simply raises his voice and the earth begins to disintegrate before him.
Here he comes! The Commander! The mighty Lord of Angel Armies is on our side. The God of Jacob fights for us! Pause in his presence
New episodes every Tuesday!
Thanks for subscribing and leaving a review! Please feel free to share with your family and friends.
Welcome to the return to joy podcast. I am your host, Gabrielle Michel Leonard. And I'm super excited about this episode. This episode comes on the heels of a sailor a time of pause that I took the whole month of January. And I'm excited to share with you about it. So let's jump right in. Welcome to 2021. That is a late and extremely delayed welcome. But a welcome that needs to be said, nonetheless, this podcast episode is coming to you late, but not really, I think exactly right on time. We are in the very first week of February. And I am so excited to be back behind the microphone. Now I'm actually in a studio space, I actually don't know how much the sound quality sounds different in this environment, but returned to joy is a mission that is a part of wildfire network. And so wildfire network is allowing me to use the studio space now. And we're setting it all up, man. So where to begin. I know that I've been MIA from doing episodes here on the podcast, and I miss it so much. But I've definitely not been MIA to the work and mission of what God is doing in my heart, in the hearts of those around me locally here in my community in San Antonio and around the world. And I'm really excited about this next phase of the return to joy podcast. And this next phase of return to joy as a ministry. This last month in January, I took a sailor, and I want to talk with you about what happened during that time and what I even mean when I say the word sailor. So in late December, I took a road trip with my mom, just before New Year's to see my grandpa, His birthday is on January 1. And so it's usually a big huge family gathering to be with Him and see Him. But obviously, of course, of course, because of COVID We weren't doing that anymore, but I want to at least get a chance to see him and check in. And my mom and I don't always get as much time to check in as well because she lives in a different state from me or a different city from me. And so this was a, an a great opportunity to be with one another and then also just express what we're thinking about how what we're reflecting upon, leading into the new year and what we feel like the Lord has been saying to us, but as I was talking with my mom about feeling that there was something significant to Psalms 46 And, and I was just personally trying to meditate on it and see what the Lord had for me. She invited me to just read it in the car and as I started reading it, which I'm going to read it here on this podcast episode and, and invite you to follow along with me I'm reading from the passion translation, you can read from any translation that that you have available to you. But as I was reading it, and I kept reading it out loud, this one thing really stood out to me. But I'm gonna go ahead and read to you the first couple of verses and then I'll share. It says starting in verse one, it says God, you're such a safe and powerful place to find refuge. You're a proven help in time of trouble, more than enough and always available whenever I need you. So we will never fear even if every structure of support were to crumble away. We will not fear even when the earthquakes and shakes moving mountains and casting them into the sea. For the raging war of stormy winds and crashing waves cannot erode our faith in you pause in His presence. I'm going to go ahead and continue on to the next couple of verses. It says verse four. God has a continuously flowing river, whose sparkling streams bring joy and delight to his people. His river flows right through the city of God most high into his holy dwelling places that says church where his holy dwelling places. God is in the midst of the his of his city secure and never shaken. At daybreak, his help will be seen with the appearing of the dawn. When the nations are in uproar with their tottering kingdoms. God simply raises his voice and the earth begins to disintegrate before him. Here he comes. The commander, the mighty Lord of angel armies is on our side, the God of Jacob fights for us pause in His presence. So I'm going to stop there. And as I was reading this, over and over again in the car with my mom, I began to ask questions. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while really, you know that, that that's one of the ways that I engage with the word and engage in conversation with the Lord is just asking questions. And I'm reading these first three verses. And I see man there's a lot of turmoil going on here. I see that there is See this, there are structures of support crumbling away. There are mountains B that are being moved and being cast into the sea. There's raging storms and crashing waves. There's just a lot going on. And I'm pretty sure that the Solomos isn't panning words like that, that are absent from from the truth of what he may be actually experiencing, or feeling in that moment. I know it ends, verse three with saying that these things can not erode our faith in you, but it's still real, what the psalmist is experiencing in that moment that gave way to the writing of this song, right. And then you have this Paul's in his presence or a sailor, which most of your translation say ina NIV, ESV would say, would say there. And then you go into this, this declaration that God has a constantly flowing river whose sparkling streams bring joy and delight to his people. And to me, the tone of verses one through three is different from the tone of four onward, there seems to be more hope, in the psalmist is language, there seems to be eyes that are more fixated upon the Lord, that are gazing and seeing man, but this is what God is doing. This is a source that God has for us. He is at work or He is present or he is real. He is among us, right? That he has something that we can actually tap into for life that is sustaining that is secure. And so for me, I was I was wrestling and asking the question, as I'm reading this, and saying, Man, But Lord, how do you transition from the experiences of verses one through three? Where it seems like nothing's going right? You mean, man, even the ground you're standing upon is not secure? How do you transition from that into verse four and beyond where there's such hope that seems so anchored and seems so much more aware of the Lord and what he's doing? What's really happening than it is aware of what's happening among us? And this was a real question I had, because that was something that I was very much so wrestling through personally, is God that there's a lot of crap that's going on in our world. There's things that I'm I'm feeling and experiencing personally. And God, how do I transition? Not in ignorance, not in turning a blind eye to not minimalizing any of the experiences and realities of our day right now. But how do I turn to you, experiencing you as a source that enables me to be able to engage empowers me to be able to engage, to live full of the power full of the hope that you have called me into here and now in this world? And so I'm asking that question over and over again. And then I felt like the answer was like, it's right here. It's right here. And the thing that I trivialize the most usually when reading Psalms, and I'm sure who knows, maybe you've had this experience as well, too. As I read back over this, again, it stood out to me, Wow, the way we transition from the insecurity, the instability, the pain, the turmoil, the the crumbling of structures, things falling apart, the way we transition from simply experiencing that, to experiencing the life source that God has for us is in the sailor. It's in the pause in His presence. I love that the passion translation translate that translates the word sailor to Paul's in his presence, because for the longest time, when I would read the Psalms, I would just skip over that that word, it would just be like, okay, cool. Sayla and then continue on with the next verse. But when I picked up the Psalms and read it in the passion translation for the first time, and saw that Paul's in his presence, I was like, Whoa, that's beautiful. Oh, that Sayla is, is instructional. It actually has a place that actually has. It's intentional the placement there. It has a purpose. It has value. I always valued the words before the sailor, and I valued the words after the sailor, but I wasn't valuing the sailor itself. And I think that that's so true of our lives as well too. And our time spent with the Lord, say lead doesn't necessarily mean not doing anything. It doesn't mean inactivity, but it is an intentional moment in which we are reflecting upon. What is the Lord just said, are what is what has been at what has been happening. And we're inviting the presence of the Lord into what has been happening, what has been our experience, and we're inviting him into our experience. As what I see the psalm is doing here, inviting the Lord into his experience, then we're instructed to Sayla, to pause to reflect, to meditate on. And in that reflection. That's why we can move and transition into the hope that we have full access to. I love how the psalmist says at the very end of verse three, it says, For the raging roar of stormy winds and crashing waves cannot erode our faith in you God. That, that is not the faith that we muster up. That's not the faith that we just give, we just create. It's not okay, you just got to have more faith. That is the faith that God provides. And how does that faith come up? It comes up in the sailor, it grows in the sailor, it grows in the paws, it grows in the waiting, it grows, in the reflection, it grows in the meditating, it grows in the listening. And in the listening in our time of having an ear, where our ears closer to what is what are you saying God than it is to the things that we are saying with our own lips, or maybe the things other people are yelling out? Who knows. But in that pause and intentional listening, that is how we walk away with the hope that enables us empowers us to even engage in our world today. And that's what I found so striking in this passage of Scripture, this Psalm, I haven't even finished the song, I'm not going to be able to finish in this podcast episode because I want this to be brief. But that's what I want to encourage you with is I invite you, if you haven't already, to take an intentional sailor to take an intentional pause in his presence, that might need to look like what I just did. In the month of January, I took a I took a pause from a lot of things. Or that may look like just being more intentional throughout your day, to pause in His presence. To seek though to ask the Lord, Lord, how would you show me how to be more mindful of you and not just mindful of of of him in your current moment? But mindful of him in the previous one? Like if you were listening to this podcast at 4am. I don't know why he listened to it 4am. I don't know maybe you got to drive to work real early. But if you were listening to this podcast super early in the morning, maybe that reflection, maybe that podcast, maybe that pause would be simply asking the Lord to remind you of what previously happened the day before? What was what was your nightlight just previously? And then having a discussion with him about how was he there? How was he there in the midst of that experience? How was he with you then, and then it reminds you how he's with you now and then you're able to transition to into that next day, into this next into the next moments. I can assure you that a pause is worth it. A sailor is worth it, whatever that looks like whether that's incorporating that in your days daily, incorporating that practice of reflection listening throughout the day, where you take some extended time like I did, and you know, think through what what that would look like. But I'm coming on the other side of intentionally pausing and I feel so filled with renewed vigor, I feel filled with renewed hope. I feel just empowered, just strengthened and encouraged and aware of the freedom that I have. The freedom that I have in him to actually be be able to do something be able to advance his kingdom be able to participate in what's happening in the world and and it actually make a difference. It means something doesn't have to be on any crazy Graham's grand scale, but it is because God is at work. I haven't been checked out from engaging what God is doing in the earth but I just feel this renewed empowerment, and, and sense of assurance. That how I engage with God personally how I engage with God, in the way I live and move in the world with other people actually matters. It has value and it's a part of how he is establishing His kingdom on the earth. Thank you for listening to another returning to joy podcast episode. It was such a joy to be here with you and be back. So thank you for tuning in. And I'm excited to continue these episodes with you but I'm also excited to invite friends So occasionally I'm gonna have other people here on the podcast with me and super pumped about that. My hope is that you were blessed by this podcast and if that is the case, please be sure to leave us a review and follow on Instagram at return to joy podcast.