From Strength to Strength

Today our group finished Stepping Up: a Journey through the Psalms of Ascent. While bands of rain alternated with breaks of cloudy calm, we celebrated what we have each taken from the psalms that the Jewish pilgrims sang on their way to the feasts. Through this study and these women, my heart has new longings to look into the hidden things of God. I have a new found desire for relationship within the body and a desire to encourage and serve. I have been blessed immeasurably.

While not one of the Psalms of Ascent, I have really grown to love Psalm 84 though this study - specifically verses 5-7. God gives us strength between "a good time remembered and another good time hoped for." It is His strength that sees us through.

Here is the entire Psalm 84. I pray it is the blessing to you that it has become to me!

1 How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD Almighty!
2 My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.

3 Even the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may have her young—
a place near your altar,
O LORD Almighty, my King and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you. Selah

5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca,
they make it a place of springs;
the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength,
till each appears before God in Zion.

8 Hear my prayer, O LORD God Almighty;
listen to me, O God of Jacob. Selah
9 Look upon our shield, O God;
look with favor on your anointed one.

10 Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
the LORD bestows favor and honor;
no good thing does he withhold
from those whose walk is blameless.

12 O LORD Almighty,
blessed is the man who trusts in you.