From: "Beverly French" <frenchb@vcss.k12.ca.us>
To: "C & P Greene" <cfgreene@teleport.com>
Subject: Sunday Greetings to All
Date: Sunday, August 27, 2000 7:21 AM

"Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden,
 The God who is our salvation.   Selah."  Psalm 68:19

Blessed: Sacred; holy; worthy of adoration, reverence and worship.  With
grateful hearts we do thank and bless our glorious Lord.  He IS the one who
bears our burdens.  Last week we looked  into a few verses of Psalm 139, but
I hope you had an opportunity to read it all in quietness with a heart ready
to receive all that the Holy Spirit desired to open up to you.  It so richly
reveals how intimate the Lord is with each of His own.  Psalm 68 is another
of the Psalms of King David.  How well he knew the daily intimate care of
the Lord.

The Amplified Bible opens up the above verse as follows,
"Blessed be the Lord, Who bears our burdens and carries us day by day, even
the God Who is our salvation!  Selah [pause, and calmy think of that]!

Yes, lay hold of that truth -- daily He bears our burdens!  How can I state
that so surely?  Because His Word says so.  Psalm 23 is a wonderful
statement of this very thing.  So often, that Psalm is used at funerals,
both Christian and Jewish, but it is a Psalm for the living; which tells of
our wonderful Shepherd's care of His flock.

Perhaps verse 4 aligns it with funerals, but notice it reads,
"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
 I fear no evil; for Thou art with me..."
Notice, it says 'walk through'.  The circumstance may be very dire, but we
do not sit down in the midst of it -- we keep moving one step at a time.
And look again, our burden bearer is right there with us.  We are to 'trust
in, rely on, cling to, our Shepherd, Christ Jesus.

Look at what He says in John 10,
"I am the Good Shepherd the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep."
Vs 11
"I am the Good Shepherd, and I know My own, and My own know Me.  Vs 14
"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give
eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch
them out of My hand."  Vs 27-28
"My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is
able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.  I and the Father are one."
Vs 29-30

Picture that, held up and covered over in the hands of God!!  But we move on
to the New Testament and read two very glorious verses,
"...Christ in you, the hope of glory."  Colossians 1:27
"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but
Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by
faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me."
Galatian 2:20

It is Christ who lives in each Believer, He is our burden bearer, nothing
comes into our lives that He doesn't know about.  It is God who "causes all
things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are
called according to His purpose."   Romans 8:28

Let us with one heart and one voice bless our Lord God now and forever more.