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Psalm 21 (NIV)
For the director of music. A psalm of David.

¹    O LORD, the king rejoices in your strength.
How great is his joy in the victories you give!

²    You have granted him the desire of his heart
and have not withheld the request of his lips.

This morning as I began to read Psalm 21, I realized that David, the writer of the psalm, is the King. So I went back to the beginning of the psalm and read it through speaking in first person instead of third person. In other words, where it says “the king” I read “I,” and where it says “his” or “him” referring to King David, I substituted “my” or “me.” So the first two verses read like this:

¹    O LORD, I rejoice in your strength.
How great is my joy in the victories you give!

²    You have granted me the desire of my heart
and have not withheld the request of my lips.

 What a blessing! Try it! It (1) caused me to read the Psalm more slowly and (2) gave it tremendously more personal impact. Sure, there were some verses that couldn’t be taken literally (“you placed a crown of pure gold on my head” v. 3b), but when they were not true in the literal sense, they were surely true in the spiritual sense (our “crown of righteousness” (2 Timothy 4:8), “crown of life” (James 1:12), and “crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4) – crowns which we shall lay at the feet of Jesus (Revelation 4:9)). As I read Psalm 21, I briefly thought of these crowns, and reflected on the crown of gold that rests on the head of Jesus (Revelation 14:14). As you personalize Psalm 21, God may bring other things to your mind. That’s the wonderful personalization work of the Holy Spirit.

So personalize it! You’ll be glad you did!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 7:19 am and is filed under devotions, Jesus, Reading the Bible, Reading through the Bible in a Year. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.