Psalm 121:1 says “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come”?
What we are looking at will affect where we are going in life. We often hear the expression, ‘his heads down at the minute”, and that normally describes when someone is feeling a bit low. They are lacking a sense of purpose and direction. They are feeling a bit lost or at sea and are discouraged about the trajectory of their life. This happens when we take our eyes off Jesus. That is why we see in this verse the psalmist is telling us that he is choosing to lift his eyes up. He is looking towards the hills. Now naturally for us to look at hills it requires us to adjust our gaze and take our eyes away from the ground, the dust, the path just in front of us and look afar to a place beyond our reach. The hills signify a high place. Many times in the bible we find accounts of people meeting with the Lord on a mountain top. This is not to say that the only place we can draw close to the Lord is a physical location but the hills are symbolic of that place that is out of the way of the daily grind. It is away from the crowds and the normal run of life. It is a quieter place. In this place on high ground we can physically gain a new perspective. We can look down on life and see it in a new way.
In order for us to truly thrive in life we need to constantly remind ourselves that we are in this world but not of this world. We may be surrounded by the hustle and bustle of daily life, we may be engaging everyday in work, school, running a home or leading a business but we are set apart. We are citizens of a heavenly kingdom and we have a king who is intimately concerned with the affairs of our lives and is greatly invested in seeing us become all that He has created us to be. Our lives may at times look ordinary but what He wants to do in and through us is extraordinary. The Lord wants us to start to see from his perspective. He wants us to lift up our eyes. To get a bigger view of what is up ahead. He is calling us to an adventure with him. He is calling us to dream big, He is calling us to step out and believe in those promises that He has put on our hearts. What is it that holds you back from just taking the Lord at his word and stepping out in faith? It’s when we let our gaze slip, it’s the moment we stop looking at Jesus and we start looking at ourselves. We see our inadequacies, our weaknesses, our past failures and our disappointments. We hear the voice in our heads saying : “ How can you trust this time is going to be different from the last?” “ Can you cope with the disappointment again?” “What will people say if it doesn’t work out?” If we entertain any voice other than the voice of the Lord we will become defeated and deflated and our heads will sink back down to the ground and our eyes will become dim and our vision will have faded.
Where does your help come from today? When the psalmist wrote this it was not because he didn’t know the answer to the question, rather he was encouraging himself to consider again the goodness of God. To remember again what He had done in his life and to build faith once more for what he will continue to do in the future.
Please remember to share this daily devotion with your friends, and if anyone wants to receive ‘Grace for Today’ directly then please just sign up via our website at www.exchangechurchbelfast.com
Unshakeable Hope Series – Exchange Church Belfast 2021