Rooted Pre-season: Episode 3

In this third episode of the Rooted pre-season, we dive deep into the heart of God’s patience and mercy. We explore Psalm 103:8-14, unpacking how this passage reassures us that God doesn’t get tired of us. We also touch on the fear of the Lord and what that really means for us today.

Transcript

Emily 0:00

Welcome to Rooted with Emily Talento, where we explore who Jesus is through context, culture, and covenant. It's pretty funny because I found on multiple occasions, countless occasions, that the topic of the day correlates so deeply to what I need to hear from God, So we're gonna unpack this in real time today. The topic is God's patience and mercy. the question of the day is, does God ever get tired of me? Now I will be honest I am the first to say that I get tired of myself. What I've found is I get confused with the voice in my head, in God sometimes where i'm frustrated because I feel like I'm failing and I'm not doing a very good job of showing grace or mercy or patience to myself. Surely God must be feeling the same way. He's the only other one who's with me 24/7. Like surely he must be tired of this. And that's not true. And the reason we know that that's not true is because of Psalm 103 verses 8 through 14, which I'm gonna read for us right now. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always Hyde, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west so far to see, remove our transgressions from us. As father shows compassion to his children. So the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him for he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. I read this and I'm like, I don't get it truthfully. A lot of that I believe comes from the fact that we have had knowledge of God's character. He's loving, he's merciful, he's patient, but we don't actually allow ourselves to experience it. How often do I sit with a verse like 1 0 3 verse 8? The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding steadfast love, and just sit with it and think about different situations in my life and remind myself that he slowed to anger. He's abounding in love. He is merciful and gracious, even though I'm not merciful and gracious with myself. This is the entire point behind the devotional. We could know things about him, but if we don't actually know him personally, experientially, then how well do we actually know him? It's not integrated into our lives. There's a line that's repeated in Psalm 103. It's in verse 11, 13, and it's in verse 17, it says so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. Verse 13 says, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. And verse 17, I will read it because it is super relevant, but the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him. What does it mean to fear the Lord? Okay. I love this concept so much. In short, it is having. An accurate picture of reality. It's recognizing who God is and who we are in relation, that he's so far beyond us and we're, as verse 14 says, dust. We are so finite and he is, like we said on day one, the one who created the foundations of the earth and made the heavens with his hands. And so fearing the Lord it's not being scared of him, but it's having the reverence and respect for him that he deserves for just being who he is. So beyond who we are as dust. Verse 14 he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. Wow. We're not fooling him. He really does see us for who we are. We are so limited. I hate that. I hate it so much. And my life reflects how much I hate that. But if we boil that down to its most simplistic, simple form, it's a heart of pride. I hate that my body has limits and it's telling me we have to sleep now. We have to eat now. I will push those things off to the absolute last possible second, because I hate the reminder that I'm limited. I hate that. I'm not God. I obviously would never say that directly 'cause I don't think that directly. But subconsciously I'm upset with my limitations. I know I'm not alone in this either. He's not expecting us to be like him 'cause we're not. He knows we're gonna fail in spite of us failing and messing up. Falling short. His mercy is ever present. God gets it. He knows our frame. He knows we're dust. He's asking for us to get it. When we have fear of the Lord that's us accepting and realizing that we are not him. He's so quick to wanna pour out his love and mercy and grace and patience on us. We're doing ourselves a disservice by not accepting it. All we have to do is fear the Lord. Remember just recognizing who he is and who we are in relation, we are dust. He is the infinite creator, God. So for today's rooted moment, we're gonna zoom in on Psalm 103, verse 13, and it's this parental imagery that David uses. Now, this is unheard of in the ancient world. Think about the ancient gods that you're familiar with. It might be the Greek gods or the Roman gods, or the Egyptian Gods or any of the other. It doesn't really matter. They're not presented as parents. I mean, they might be parents in their storylines, but they're not presented as compassionate, loving parents a lot of times they're portrayed as distant, unpredictable, easily provoked. They're not patient. They're not merciful, they're not loving. They're selfish. They're capricious. They're vain. Our God presents himself honestly as the opposite. But think about it. Ancient gods were written by people. This is another huge support for scripture being the word of God. I mean, there's so much, and we could talk about that in a whole other episode, but all of the other gods were made up by people, right? Like they're fake, they're not real, and their stories show that they're massively flawed because man is massively flawed. But our God throughout scripture is presenting himself to be so other, so different. This isn't a story that a person could even consider writing. It's so outside of At the end of it all. If you take nothing else away, God is calling us to recognize who he is versus who we are. He knows we're dust. He knows we have limitations. The faster we can accept that and lean into him, the faster we have freedom. I hope you like this episode. If you did, you could do all of the things that you normally would do for any of the podcasts you like, like, comment, subscribe, all of the things. You could also follow me on Instagram. I have two at Emily Talento and at Rooted with Emily Talento. There are some really exciting things. There are some really exciting things happening very soon. So maybe I'll explain more in the next episode. But for now. I'll see you next time.