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Psalm 81 reads as follows from the NIV version of the Bible: 1 Sing for joy to God our strength; shout aloud to the God of Jacob! 2 Begin the music, strike the tambourine, play the melodious harp and lyre. 3 Sound the ram’s horn at the New Moon, and when the moon is full, on the day of our Feast; 4 this is a decree for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob. 5 He established it as a statute for Joseph when he went out against Egypt, where we heard a language we did not understand. [b] 6 He says, “I removed the burden from their shoulders; their hands were set free from the basket. 7 In your distress you called and I rescued you, I answered you out of a thundercloud; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah 8 “Hear, O my people, and I will warn you— if you would but listen to me, O Israel! 9 You shall have no foreign god among you; you shall not bow down to an alien god. 10 I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. 11 “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. 12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices. 13 “If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would follow my ways, 14 how quickly would I subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes! 15 Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him, and their punishment would last forever. 16 But you would be fed with the finest of wheat; with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.” The emphasis of this psalm is being attentive to the Lord and his ways by the channels of careful listening. The contrast of not doing this is highlighted in verse 11 and 12 which says, 11 “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. 12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices. Verses 8, 11, and 13 in this psalm mention the key word listen which is the secret word of hope in this psalm. The word listen denotes that this is a personal walk, as someone else doesn't do the listening for you. It can involve listening to the ways of the Lord through his servants but with whatever means are available the process of listening must be continually be engaged and this includes listening in personal prayer as mentioned all through the Bible. What this means is that the Lord will not stop communicating, and as he will be in constant communication, the turn will be towards listening to this communication. A major theme that runs through this psalm is that the turn to the Lord is a wide turn back. The impression might be that your counsel and your ideas will get you to those places and situations of abundance and going to the ways of the Lord will involve sacrificing personal hopes and visions and seeking the Lord is akin to sidetracking. The idea of the ways of the Lord is more so the narrow path that must be found and followed and this becomes the mindset that if I am diligent about this idea or theory on my own, this is the primary road. This becomes the widely prevailing mindset that if I am diligent about this set of choices, options, ideals and ideas or theory, I will get myself a nice piece of pie or a nice spot on the pasture out there. But active listening in prayer does mean that you can't suddenly sidestep this process of listening, when say favorable terms arise and you have to keep on tuning in either way, whether things are going great, or whether they seemingly are not going that great. This psalm indicates that the Lord’s counsel will be continously available and will be communicated widely and all the way across all landscapes of good possibilities. This psalm gives the opposite vision of this idea finding the road solely through your own efforts and clearly shows that by not heeding the overlooking and presiding voice of the Lord and following his ways, they would be missing out on what could have been for the good and indeed for the finest. In the final verses the Lord is saying he has the finest wheat and will give it and this is symbolic of the finest anything in terms of what you might be searching for, the Lord has the sighting for you of better, finer choices. Our own sighting in naturally limited, and reliance on what the Lord see's is always going to be a significant upgrade over what we can see in the moment. This is also indicative that the Lord knows the finest, through the thicket of all that is out there and may hide the finest from our better views both within our thoughts and outside in what we are seeing. It is up to him to reveal and the hindrances towards him revealing are not there, despite our shortfalls, that Lord is not hampered in getting a communication or revealing through to us. There will be no blocks or obstacles to this, and it is part of his creative presence that cannot be thrashed as it says he will give honey from a rock. If anything a rock would be an obstacle to honey and not a source. The honey from the rock indicates that despite the roadblock, or the obstacle, from the perspective of the Lord there is no obstacle towards the revealing of the good and he will take you past the rock or obstacle and to the honey, something you might not have been able to do on your own. This does indicate how important listening is in that, you are getting past that block, that obstacle that rock, to the revealing of what the Lord does have, beyond the obstacle that you are confronting and just can't get past. This derivation is something that cannot happen through natural means, and is symbolic of the supernatural presence of the Lord and his great gifts as coming from an unknown source, from the secret places as it mentions in this psalm. . Honey is also symbolic of pleasantness and a soothing aspects of this wondrous presence. That it is coming from a rock is highlighting that the Lord is behind the unknown elements of source and supply, as there is no other actual supply from a rock along the lines of honey. Another aspect of this to consider is what is the Lord demonstrating to you at this time in his communications and answers. It might be for example, if you get an answer that addresses a unique and seemingly distant concern that nobody or nothing else could help you with, that the Lord is demonstrating that anything that concerns you will be addressed. The demonstration involved, such as in the case of the appearance of honey from the rock, is a demonstration that reveals the Lord's concern and how the Lord's concern can and will take you from where you are to the finest of the finest, a trip that was otherwise just about impossible in a given instance, where otherwise having been left on your own, you are left with just a rock and no honey. Joseph of Genesis is mentioned in this psalm, and we know from his story that the Lord took him from the depths of the well and the confines of the jail to the glorious position of second in command to Pharaoh in Egypt and the overseer of all the known food supply for the entire world in the era of great world wide famine great famine. In this story, Joseph was the overseer of the finest supplies of grain, and there was prescience or a revealing given on what was to happen, through the dreams of Pharaoh which were only interpreted by Joseph, who was in possession of a special wisdom. The turn that Joseph took was certainly wide and into an unfolding preeminence while following the voice of the Lord. There might be the well intention-ed but erroneous idea that this involves sacrifice to turn to the Lord. Even the idea of giving up things or sacrificing will bring you to the crossroads when indeed this might be following your own counsel unless it goes into and derives from experience of listening and paying attention to the Lord, and any disciple found should be aimed towards this process, and not something else that might be a discipline per say, but superfluous to listening to the Lord. The relationship isn't formed on a sacrificial basis even if there is some tint of the sacrificial, it involves primarily forces of listening and attentiveness which does not compromise an abundance or vastness that the Lord may have upon his revealing. There is no way, no matter what sacrifices Joseph may have conceived of, that these sacrifices could have gotten him honey from the rock, or from the confines he was in, such as the jail cell, and the bottom of the well, to the a position that had to have been inconceivable and rather unimaginable from where he had been. You might even say, that the turn of events, that Joseph did experience, would have been for him, unfathomable to him given where he was initially. The turn will involve removing or taking away burdens, obstacles and lost freedoms as it says in verse 6. Joseph was involved in great troubles from which the Lord gave him subsequent relief and subsequent freedom as he made the wide turn into the amazing graces and gifts of the Lord for him that became almost like an unending open expanse of blessing upon blessing. We know from the story, he kept the Lord in mind even in the very midst of his troubling experiences, including his rebuke of the attempted seduction of the wife of Pharaoh, who had been treating him with great favor and he neither wanted to offend him or the Lord in this situation. Even while the food supply of the earth was drying up and becoming like a giant desert, for Joseph, it was a giant oasis of blessings that surpassed every horizon of difficulty that was otherwise out there. There were fully contrasting elements to the story, the abundance of grain overseen by Joseph in contrast to global famine. In the revealing, the Lord might still have the contrasts up and seen, and he might not take away keen contrasts as he reveals his paths. Symbolically the blessings of the Lord were still available to the many through the oversight of Joseph and for Egypt and the outer world within the big picture of vast famine he was the representative for the many of the wide turn back to the Lord also revealing for others even while his own personal way was a wide turn into the presence of the Lord. There is the idea of relief here from burden and someone can think about how they might be less burdened to start with and what that vision of being unburdened might contain. The turn is not only to vastness but also to a position of now being unburdened with the context of the view of this overall vastness and the overall vastness is context-ed through the vastness of the relationship with the Lord which also manifests into a vastness in all realms including witin spiritual world and not excluding within the material world. The Lord will unburden as he brings about his ease and his freedom well formed into the vastness of this relationship and all it contains. Verse 10 specifically uses talks of the widening or great expanse of how the Lord can fill the soul, but because this is so expansive in nature, it does require continuation of the aspect of keen listening for it. This verse is symbolic of how much the soul and spirit of a person can receive from the goodness of the Lord, and he has given us the capacity to receive great and wondrous blessings, and inherent and developed capacities alone are something to give thanks on. Joseph had a great capacity for exponential wisdom, something he must have known and must have been grateful for early on in his journey, and he did experience great difficulties early on. When it is saying “open your mouth wide” in this psalm, it is talking about the great expanse of the soul and spirit that a person has in terms of capacity to craft openness and understanding towards the ways of the Lord. It is a mistake to see yourself as small in this turnaround, in that the Lord has imbued you with a width or wideness of the soul that can receive still greater blessings and you can go in person to the secret place of thunder mentioned in verse 8 which is this psalm's representation,or version of the secret personal relationship with the Lord, and a New Testament reference to this is when it talks about praying in secret in the gospels. These gifts are contingent, as the word if is used in the pivotal verse 8, where the Lord is admonishing his people or correcting them and saying that great if of when they heed his voice, he will bring them into these wonders. It is hard to say what the points are of missing out and not missing out on these great blessings but it is clear that the right road and the correct path will always involve active, copious and ongoing listening and hearing what the Lord has to communicate and these communications must be sought continuously and daily. What might be considered following your own counsel needs to be discerned and worked on but anything that involves overdoing it and drifting away from the Lord could involve this idea of following your own counsel. There can be a maintenance towards being open to the hearing of the communications from the Lord and changing any prior established direction if the Lord so advises. With prayer, the fog of your own confusion and uncertainty is brought into this, but the Lord will get past that thicket and see what you are really communicating as even language is sometimes self limiting and our truest requests cannot be wholly linked to words alone. This is an additional why greater emphasis on listening and hearing in prayer is important, because what the Lord is hearing might be different that what you are actually saying in prayer and answers might be different because the Lord is hearing different. Because of the limitations of language your own understanding of what you are asking becomes somewhat limited and ill formed at times, and the ways that the Lord will get back to you will involve cutting through the fog and reading you in ways that you are not reading yourself because of these limitations. So the prayer watch in terms of hearing and listening for communications from the Lord should be more expansive in scope than your actual requests are and that the understanding is that personal approach in prayer is by nature limited while the answers and communications are unlimited or not subject to the same limitations of your actual requests and subsequent answers remain unbounded from our own limitations and come from sourcing a deeper and clearer reading of your requests than you had in making them in the first place and supreme knowledge as to what they really are. Verse 7 clearly speaks of the answer from the secret place of thunder, so the answers are coming from a great and wondrous place that is secretive and preserved therefore in the nature of a secret therefore the watch for these answers should be not like looking at the next person on the sand at the beach but more so like looking over the great expanse of the giant and wondrous ocean that will be unfolding its treasures in new and mysterious ways. The Lord however will unburden and part of the being unburdened will be giving an answer that is easy to find and follow but there needs to be an understanding that it will often be different and greater than what is along the lines of your request although there is nothing to say it will not be directly in line with your request either and what you are thinking so you cannot always equate or do a side by side positioning with your requests and the answers you will be finding to these requests. This psalm shows and allows that the road of your own counsel and devices will tend to narrow and become burdened while the wide turn back to the Lord will be of light and of an easier road to an ever widening expanse of previously unfathomable blessings.
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