For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
Psalm 122:9
I will seek your prosperity.
During 2025, Peachtree Church is focusing on the Book of Psalms with a series called Dwell, through which we seek to deepen our conversation with God and open ourselves to hearing his response. The practice of praying three times each day will unite the voices of our hearts and souls as we seek the day when we will see the full realization of the Kingdom of God, promised in Revelation 21:3: “…Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”
We will email devotionals twice weekly with Monday’s providing an overview of the Psalm as a whole, and Wednesday’s focused on that week’s Daily Dwell.
Devotional
I remember sitting in Sunday School as a child with my hands held together and learning how to do the finger movements to the rhyme that begins, “Here is the church, here is the steeple.” I’m willing to bet that at least a few of you, as you are reading these words, are putting your phone down on a desk or countertop to go through the whole exercise, which reminds us that the church is not the building itself but the people whom God has called together into these four walls to know and experience His presence in the house of the Lord. It’s always amazing to me that those words that so many of us learned as children have a depth of theological meaning that goes beyond an easy understanding.
In Psalm 122, the Psalmist concludes his words by seeking the prosperity of Jerusalem for “the sake of the house of the Lord,” a phrase which meant the tabernacle and later the temple itself. It’s an image that many of us have a harder time understanding, as we tend to not associate the prosperity of a city with the goodness of our church home. Maybe we can and should read and hear these words in a new light.
What does it mean that, for the sake of the church, I seek the prosperity of God’s people. I don’t want to steer us toward the idea of a prosperity Gospel. I want to look toward the good of God’s people, which we can understand when we think about a word that appears especially throughout Paul’s writings: Agape. Agape is one of the four main words for love that appears in Greek writing, and is the one that is most common in the Bible, but it can be difficult for many of us to grasp, as English doesn’t do a good job of translating.
Agape is to desire the best for someone, to seek their prosperity, not because of who they are or what they can do for us, but simply because they too have been made in the image of God just as each of us has been. For the sake the of the church, for the betterment of the Kingdom of God, I will seek to show agape love to God’s people. How will the world look if in the year ahead, we can do that? Are you willing to try?
For Reflection
- How do you see the connection between the house of the Lord and the prosperity of God’s people?
- As the new year begins tomorrow, how might you show agape love to others?
Prayer
Lord, help us seek the good that you have called us to, not simply for you, but for the people whom you have called as our community of faith. Inspire our hearts and minds to be a people who show our love for you, the grace that you have bestowed upon us, and the call that you have placed on our lives through all that we do. In Jesus name we pray; amen.
Published under
Devotionals