SING A NEW SONG: GOOD CHEER

The week is Rally Day! This a great start for the new school year and a new church school year. Learning is an important part of discipleship and spiritual growth. Use this as an opportunity to strengthen your spiritual journey!  We continue our series Sing a New Song with the sermon, Good Cheer. This is an old phrase, yet we understand its meaning It has some variant meanings such as “being happy” but in the Biblical sense it means to be of “good courage.” Courage is a powerful reality for our lives and we have to find enough of it in order to have peace and contentment. Courage is never the absence of fear, it is always a process of managing our fear. This is precisely the problem. Fear is always easy to manage when we have enough strength, enough power, enough money, or a great number of people supporting us. To make matters worse, if we pause and listen to the world around us we will find the voices of fear are numerous and relentless. What can make us better managers of fear? We will never be without it. Perhaps Psalm 46 can help us discover a path to greater courage. This Psalm was not written by King David but by a group called the “Sons of Korah.” We don’t know if they were related or simply shared a common bond. This song is their contribution to worship and possibly their creed. It was how they managed fear and found God’s courage for the trouble of their life, especially when they felt small and all alone! Their song can help us find the same path they experienced as they struggled with the beast of fear! Our prayer is that you will find the courage of Psalm 46, that God is the source of your strength and help amid waves of fear and turmoil! May you be encouraged as you read this Psalm.

Psalm 46: God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, ³ though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. ⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. ⁵ God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. ⁶ Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. ⁷ The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. ⁸ Come and see what the LORD has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. ⁹ He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. ¹⁰ He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”¹¹ The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. (NIV)