God Don't Carry No Grudges - Psalm 30:4-5

"Sing to Yahweh, you His faithful ones, and praise His holy name. For His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor, a lifetime. Weeping may spend the night, but there is joy in the morning" (Psalm 30:4-5,HCSB).

If you have children, I would dare say that you have been mad at them on more than one occasion because of their misbehavior.

The anger occurs because you don't want them to grow up acting badly and you probably expressed that concern to them in some form or manner.

But you punish the child if the misbehavior warrants punishment, and then you move on and don't hold it against the child for the rest of his or her lifetime.

For God's people, His faithful ones, He acts toward us in much the same way.

God acts like a loving and benevolent father who disciplines us when needed, but continually loves and blesses us.

That concept is easy for us to grasp because that's generally the way we relate to our children.

What we don't seem to understand, sometimes, is that God shows His favor to reconcile us to Him for our misbehavior. God gets over our misbehavior but sometimes we don't think He does.

We somehow believe that God is always mad at us because we don't live up to His expectations and then we don't ever become all He wants us to be.

God's anger, His discipline, only lasts for a short while, but His favor and blessing, His lovingkindness, last for a lifetime--no, for an eternity!

So, I think the psalmist is saying that God is not mad at you all the time like you think He is!

Where I come from, we might even say it like this: God don't carry no grudges!

God's not mad at you about something you did and shouldn't have done or didn't do and should have done a long time ago or last week or maybe even yesterday.

So there's no need to feel sorry for yourself because you think God is mad at you.

Let the joy of the Lord infiltrate your day, your life; today start becoming everything God wants you to be in Him!  

"Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14,HCSB).