You have Turned My Mourning into Dancing!

¹¹ You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness,
¹² To the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.

Psalm 30:11-12

People love to quote this scripture as a promise, and we should. God, Jehovah, is going to turn our mourning, our times of sadness, into a time of dancing and rejoicing! This is true in your life, He is waiting to do it! 

But what is He waiting on?

This scripture gives us some hints. The first hint is in verse eleven:

You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness,

What is sackcloth? Sackcloth is a very rough material that was worn by those who mourn as they fasted and sought God. In other words, the psalmist is implying that during his time of mourning, during his difficult times, he was seeking God through fasting and prayer.

Have you been actively seeking God?

This is often a prerequisite of the blessing. We must seek God and invite Him humbly into our lives, into our circumstance. Then He will come and turn our mourning into dancing and cloth us with gladness!

The second hint is in verse 12:

To the end that my glory may sing praise to You...

I find it interesting that the psalmist is talking about his own glory not God's glory. So it is okay to desire glory for ourselves as long as we have the right focus for that glory.

Our glory should bring Him glory!

Are you honestly planning on declaring His praise and glory through your blessing? If we seek to glorify God in everything we do then God will glorify us!

Keeping this in mind we still at times have to go through the night. We still have to go through the dark times. It is times of testing, of trials, of training and preparation for ministry. In my post Rivers Are About To Spring Forth I wrote about God making a way through the wilderness, but we still go through the wilderness. However the rivers are coming! 

If you seek Him then you will experience the rivers springing forth. 

In fact I believe that in this month of January you have already seen trickles of those rivers. You may not have noticed them, they may have seemed small and insignificant in light of your wilderness, but they are signs of the dam getting ready to burst! 

The river of the Spirit of God is about to burst forth in your life!

These Signs Shall Follow...

¹⁵ And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. ¹⁶ He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. ¹⁷ And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; ¹⁸ they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

Mark 16:15-18

Many people want the signs. They want to see miracles and healings worked through them or they want to see a healing in their own life, but they forget that there are two criteria to be met before we see that manifested:

1) You must "Go... and preach the gospel" (v. 15)

2) You must "believe" (v. 17)

If we don't see the supernatural daily then we need to check our lives by these two criteria. 

1) Are you adhering to the call to preach the Gospel?

This does not mean that you have to quit your day job and start out in full-time ministry necessarily. If God has called you to do that then you'd better do it, but that's not what this verse is about. In Acts, Luke writes that Jesus told the disciples;

...you shall be witnesses to Me... (Acts 1:8)

A witness is simply someone who tells what they have experienced. If you are in a murder trial and a witness is called up they simply state that what they saw, heard, smelled, or felt. They are not even supposed to make any assumptions in regard to their experience but simply state the experience. 

Jesus told His disciples to be witnesses of Him, of their experiences with Him. 

We are to do the same!

What's your experience with Jesus? Have you talked with Him? Have you experienced His deliverance in your life? Healing? Comfort? Whatever you have experienced with Jesus is what He has asked you to share with those who don't know Him. Just be sure your experience matches up with the Word. 

If you have not experienced Him then you need to!

Go to my page What is the Gospel to learn how to experience Him. 

2) Do you truly believe?

Do you truly believe that the supernatural will happen around you? The Bible makes it clear that the supernatural requires faith. If you want to see healing then you need to believe in hearing, if you want to see devils cast out then you must believe in your authority over the devils. 

If you do not believe then chances are the miracles won't be present in your ministry.

Do you believe that God still heals today? 

Do you believe in your authority over the enemy?

Do you believe in the manifested power of God? 

If not then you need to get in the Word!

The Word of God is where we build our faith for the supernatural. Jesus tells us that we can do the same miracles He did, and even greater miracles! (John 14:12) 

Read the Word, meditate on it, listen to it, do whatever it takes to get the Word in you!

Meditate on John 14:12 until you believe it for your own life. Then study the Gospels and see all the miracles that Jesus did. That is what should be following your life and ministry as you preach the Gospel!

Call on the Name of the Lord!

For whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Romans 10:13

This is an awesome promise of the Word! Here Paul is debunking the thought that salvation was only for the Jews. He says whoever, whether Jew or Gentile, calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved! But to truly understand this verse we must ask ourselves two questions:

1) What does it mean to be saved? 

The Greek word here is the word Sozo. According to Strong's Concordance the word means "save, heal, preserve, rescue". HELPS Word studies further defines it "deliver out of danger and into safety". You can refer to Bible Hub as a further resource.

Of course, this ultimately is referring to salvation from sin and from hell. We know from other scriptures in Romans that "All have sinned..." (3:23) and that "...the wages of sin is death..." (6:23). So Paul is referring to salvation from this death, eternal separation from God in hell, to the safety of eternal life.

If you have not made the decision to call on the name of the Lord then please visit my page What is the Gospel. However I believe that the significance of this verse and this promise doesn't stop the moment we accept salvation. Let us ask one more question.

2) What is the name of the Lord?

The term 'Lord' is Kurios which denotes "a person exercising complete ownership rights". This means that by saying we are calling on the Lord we are giving up ownership over ourselves. From that point on we no longer belong to ourselves but to the Lord. However 'Lord' is not a name, it is a title. So what is the name of the Lord?

God announces His name to Moses when talking to him from the burning bush. God proclaims His name as simply "I AM" (Exodus 3:14). The English transliteration of this name is Yahweh or Jehovah. This names denotes the never changing nature of God. He is who He is and that will never change! The Bible says "I am the Lord, I change not" (Malachi 3:6).

Then throughout the Old Testament we see various attributes to this name:

Jehovah Jireh - Genesis 22:14 - The Lord will provide
Jehovah Rapha - Exodus 15:26 - The Lord that heals
Jehovah Nissi - Exodus 17:15 - The Lord my banner (victory)
Jehovah Mekoddishkem - Exodus 31:13 - The Lord who makes holy
Jehovah Shalom - Judges 6:24 - The Lord is peace
Jehovah Shammah - Ezekiel 48:35 - The Lord is there

(For a more complete list of the names of God go here)

This is just a small sampling of the names that God, Jehovah, has revealed Himself as. Already we can get a sense of the all encompassing nature of the above verse! Think about it, 

Whoever calls on Jehovah Jireh, Rapha, Nissi, Mekoddiskem, Shalom, Shammah shall be saved! Are you in need of provision, healing, victory, sanctification, peace, or simply the presence of the Almighty? Just call on His name! You shall be saved from your situation!