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For the sake of Your word, and according to Your own heart, You have done all this greatness to let Your servant know. For this reason You are great, O Lord GOD; for there is none like You, and there is no God besides You, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
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In today’s verse King David is speaking to the Lord, a constant habit of his (as it should be of ours) praising Him for His greatness. David attributes his knowledge of the fact that there is none like our God to having heard with his ears. Although there were in his time, and probably even more in ours, many other so-called gods.

He had seen the mighty hand of God at work in and through many events in his own life. Consider David’s encounter with Goliath the giant. {1Sam.17} He would write in his psalms that “Once God has spoken; Twice I have heard this: That power belongs to God;” {Ps.62:11} Just as the apostle Paul would write, and live, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. {Rom.10:17}

I have (as we all should) a testimony, and in light of today’s message I would like to share some of it. I was born! If you think that was too mundane an event to call a testimony let me first remind you of one of David’s great testimonies, now part of God’s eternal Word: “I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the LORD sustains me.” {Ps.3:5} Some people probably lay down and slept last night and did not wake up!

What makes my birth a testimony was the fact that doctors who were caring for my mother wanted to abort me! And in 1943 that was extremely unusual! My Father took my mother to another hospital and another doctor and she lived, and obviously, so did I.

Before there was a polio vaccine I was stricken with the disease in the early 1950’s during the epidemic that rocked the U.S. as well as a few other countries. Many, many children were permanently crippled, many even dying. My arms and legs were paralyzed and I was quarantined in a dedicated hospital with many others. My mother prayed and I walked. Thank God for praying mothers!

While serving in the U.S. Navy we were caught in a monstrous storm at sea where there was significant damage and a number of sailors were injured, some even died. I would later come to understand the fulness of what Psalm 107, verses 23-30 mean. (read them) We made it through the storm!

I had been raised and schooled as a Roman Catholic all throughout my childhood. However, I never had a true personal relationship with the Lord. Then on my thirty-third birthday while sitting at my kitchen table having a cup of coffee, I looked up on the top of the refrigerator and saw my wife Alice’s new bible. She had recently had a radical encounter with the Lord at a prayer meeting that she and her sister had gone to where she was given that bible. We had never had a bible in our house previously! Now moved by something, (the Holy Ghost) I got up and walked over, picked up her bible and said, “Jesus if you are real show me.”

I sat back down and randomly flipped open the bible, looked and saw these words: “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him?” {Ps.8:3-4} It pierced my heart!

My life had been filled with pride. I was sure that I was better than almost everybody else. I had all of the trappings of success, house, cars, my fancy job in New York City as a consultant… Until I would look into the night sky and see the magnificence of the moon, the stars: things I thought would continue to be there a thousand years after I was gone! It humbled me, often to the point of depression.

Now Jesus was telling me that it was not about what I thought of me, but rather what He thought of me that matters. It not only changed my life, His word gave me life. A new life now filled not with trials and tribulations, but rather with adventures, testimonies, all of which would glorify God.

In that new life I was hit by a speeding semi-truck while on foot in an underdeveloped country in Central America. The two fellows who were in the truck were unfortunately killed on the spot while I, with most of my body broken, would live to preach another day. I was there to share the love, the goodness and the greatness of God, and as soon as I had been healed enough, wired and screwed together, Alice and I returned to continue that mission—wherever the Lord sends us.

So I now join David as you also should in saying:
“For the sake of Your word, and according to Your own heart, You have done all this greatness to let Your servant know. For this reason You are great, O Lord God; for there is none like You, and there is no God besides You, according to all that we have heard with our ears.” (2 Samuel 7:21-22)

LIVE THE FULNESS OF NEW LIFE