Devotional

Turn Us Again

Psalm 80:3

“Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.”

A son loves to please his father. No doubt you can remember back to the days of your childhood when you used to help your dad around the house. Think of those times that you purposely did something that you knew would please your father and then pointed it out to him   expecting to see a smile break across his face. On the other hand there were times when you displeased your father, and instead of receiving a shining smile, you received a full faced frown. I remember one such time. My dad always gave me and my brothers our haircuts. One evening when he was cutting one of my brother’s hair, I decided to grab his clippers (behind his back) and proceeded to run them down the center of my head. Now, if you are imagining a  reversed mohawk you have got the picture. You probably can imagine the look that came across my father’s face. It was anything but a smile! At that point I wished I had not done that because of how upset I made my father.  I did everything I could to get back in his “good graces”.

As Christians, we, at times, unfortunately find ourselves displeasing our Heavenly Father. The question that comes to mind is “how can we get back to having our Father smile toward us?” Israel had found themselves in the hands of their enemies and in desperate need of God’s help.  They had sinned, and God was angry against their prayers (80:4). Their situation was deplorable! So the Psalmist prays to his Heavenly Father imploring Him to “Turn us again…” (restore us to a right relationship with our Father) “…and cause thy face to shine…” (that brings His beaming countenance of approval) “…and we shall be saved” (and we can be delivered, or God’s face will shine on us again because our lives please Him). Our Father cannot and will not deliver us from bondage due to sin until we have turned back to Him in repentance. We as His erring children must seek to be restored through confessing and forsaking our own way.  Thus our prayer ought be “Turn us again…” In order to pray this prayer you must be willing to be turned, which means that you must admit your need to be turned. Do you have the beaming countenance of your Father’s approval on your life or have you found yourself in bondage needing His deliverance? He is only a prayer away for the humble.