Psa 9:1 (NIV) For the director of music. To the tune of “The Death of the Son.” A psalm of David. I will praise You, O LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all Your wonders. This is a time for you to tell God that you love Him, a time to praise Him for all He is and all He does. It is a time to commit to telling everyone about all the wonders He has done. Praise Him for the miracles He has done in your life that have been so incredible. Thank Him for doing so many supernatural things in your life and ministry. Tell Him you want everyone to know about His love and care. He is faithful to you every moment of every day.

Psa 9:2 (NIV) I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High. It is important to tell God we are glad He is our God. We need to be glad He is the God of the universe. We need to be excited with the decisions He has made as to the kind of character He would have; He can be anything He wants. He has all power and no one can make Him be or do anything. Yet, with all His freedom and power to be anything, He chose to be so incredibly generous and loving. We need to be glad and rejoice in the fact that He is the Most High. We need to love singing songs that praise Him for all of these decisions He has made.

Psa 9:3 (NIV) My enemies turn back; they stumble and perish before You. With all the evil that would like to take control, God has exercised His great power to keep them from taking over His Kingdom and His people. It is so wonderful that He is the most powerful. If it were not for Him, evil would reign everywhere. The decisions Satan made exhibit what kind of god he would be. If he were in control, he would be filling us and the universe with evil. But, OUR God has chosen love, grace, and mercy even though He is all powerful. It is vital that we be thrilled with the fact that HIS decisions rule the universe. He used His power, wisdom, knowledge, and understanding to cause all these wonderful things to come into being.

Psa 9:4 (NIV) For You have upheld my right and my cause; You have sat on Your throne, judging righteously. All people are getting the benefits of Who God is. With His grace and mercy, He has made the circumstances of our life work together for good. With His control, He has made sure that no good cause goes neglected. With His oversight, He has seen everything; nothing has escaped His observation; no one is being failed by Him. He keeps righteousness flowing into our lives.

Psa 9:5 (NIV) You have rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked; You have blotted out their name for ever and ever. Evil people, nations, and philosophies rise and then are brought down by God’s great care. We are living in the benefits of mighty miracles He has worked throughout history. Our life is an example of His great love, grace, mercy, power, and blessings. We have so much to praise Him for. If it hadn’t been for His intervention, we would have already been destroyed. We would have lived a short life on this earth. We would have suffered greatly from being overwhelmed with wicked people. Instead, He has constantly stepped in and put a stop to all their plans and efforts. He is an awesome God!

Psa 9:6 (NIV) Endless ruin has overtaken the enemy, You have uprooted their cities; even the memory of them has perished. We can see through historical accounts people and nations who have fallen because of His great protection. Even those who are not serving Him are benefiting from His wonderful protection. If these enemies of righteousness had, had their way, this whole planet would be overrun with these enemies; but, He stopped them. He enabled people who respected His justice to win over them. Throughout history He uprooted their cities and destroyed their armies. People have already forgotten these wonderful achievements; and, they have failed to understand how different life would be if He hadn’t put a stop to their goals and their philosophies.

Psa 9:7 (NIV) The LORD reigns forever; He has established His throne for judgment. We need to be glad He is and will always be in charge. We need to be sure that the universe and life as we know it would be horrible without His eternal reign. We need to be thrilled that it is His throne that makes the verdict for the future of all mankind. We need to trust Him to do perfectly in all judgments. Even though we didn’t get to choose Him as the God of the universe. We should now gladly choose Him as the God of our life. If we had been able to pick what kind of God we would want controlling our universe and our life, we wouldn’t have had the wisdom to design Who He already is. But, now that we see Him, we should be thrilled at the beauty of His character and philosophies. His heart is more wonderful than we can fathom.

Psa 9:8 (NIV) He will judge the world in righteousness; He will govern the people with justice. God is in control whether people want Him to be or not. For those who reject Him, we need to be glad that He governs them in righteous justice. Those who reject Him live lives that would bring great distress to all those around them. Since God has chosen all the ways that we all want to be treated, those who reject Him also reject all He stands for. They reject Him because they don’t love the things we love. They don’t represent the goodness we enjoy. They would like to create a lifestyle that God and we hate. His ways are the only way to run life, the world, and the universe. His ways cannot be improved on.

Psa 9:9 (NIV) The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. When God is giving the oppressors a short season to change their ways, He is always there to protect us from them. He provides us with a place to run and hide from their evil. It would be unbearable if we didn’t have Him to protect us from them. But, we need to be glad He gives them a time to repent. We need to be glad He is longsuffering with them. We need to be glad that He is gracious and merciful to every person. This is the only hell we will ever know. This may be the only heaven they will ever know. We need to want everyone to have a chance to change their minds and turn to God. Sometime these people make it extremely painful to live around them. But, it is worth it if it provides them with a complete opportunity to see their evil deeds, repent of them, and turn to God.

Psa 9:10 (NIV) Those who know Your name will trust in You, for You, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek You. Those who finally see how great God is will put their complete trust in Him. His kindness and longsuffering are a wonderful testimony to them of how great He is. And, the fact that He always protects those who have turned to Him also gives them the message of His love. We know it is a very tight balance between giving the wrong doers an adequate chance and protecting us from their evil. But, He is all wise and knows how to maintain that perfect balance; we must respect His wisdom. We need to submit our life’s experiences with the unsaved into His hands. He knows what is best for us and them.

Psa 9:11 (NIV) Sing praises to the LORD, enthroned in Zion; proclaim among the nations what He has done. We need God’s help to sing, proclaim, and testify to the nations. We need His help to tell them all about His greatness. He will empower us to let His praises flood out of our mouth like a great river. He will let His awesome greatness be made known by every person who loves Him. He wants to help all of us spread His miracles and wonders around the world. He will work with us so we can let the whole world know that He is the only One worthy of ruling our lives, the earth, and the universe; there is no one like Him. He alone has the character that we need to be in charge of us and the world around us.

Psa 9:12 (NIV) For He Who avenges blood remembers; He does not ignore the cry of the afflicted. Avenging belongs to God. We must trust Him to bring justice to all situations. No one else is wise enough to make these decisions. If we will lay our circumstances, relationships, and possessions at His feet, He will work miracles for us. He will use us and all we have to be His help to the suffering and afflicted. We need to be His hands of love and power to touch their lives so they can feel His care. We can let His care come to them so they are able to give up all desires for getting revenge. He will help us all to put the evil doers in His hands for Him to decide their destiny.

Psa 9:13-14 (NIV) O LORD, see how my enemies persecute me! Have mercy and lift me up from the gates of death, Psa 9:14 (NIV) that I may declare Your praises in the gates of the Daughter of Zion and there rejoice in Your salvation.

VERSE THIRTEEN: Our enemies are trying to keep us from sharing Jesus with those who don’t know Him. So, we need His help to rejoice that we are able to suffer their persecution for His cause. He will help us be glad we are not loved by those who hate Him. There are billions of people who want Him. And, our and Jesus’ enemies have dedicated themselves to the resisting His Truth. They hate Jesus and all He represents. They don’t want His Truth to get to the people who have the hungering and thirsting for His righteousness. They are trying to stand up like a wall in between us and needy people. They know that His Truth will set these people free; and, they don’t want them to be free.

Jesus has paid a great price for the freedom of all who will accept Him. We need to get to those seekers and tell them His Truth. We need God’s mercy so we can be lifted up from the gates of death. We need His help to pass through all the traps that have been set against us. We must ask Him to help us make contact with all who seek to know Him. We also need to care for all who are ministering in His Name. We must serve every Christian and every seeker with God’s love, grace, mercy, power, and Truth. We must want them to have everything He has to offer.

VERSE FOURTEEN: We must want to declare to every Jew and every Gentile the greatness of Jesus’ salvation. His miracles in our life alone will boggle our mind. Plus, He will help us be in awe of all the miracles of those who live around us. Then we need to start thinking about all of those for whom He has worked miracles in all the earth. Our mouth will run out of words to express praises for them all. He has shown Himself strong in the lives of billions of people. What an awesome God He is! It going to take all of eternity and all our glorified bodies can express; and, still we will not be able to tell of all His greatness.

Psa 9:15 (NIV) The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug; their feet are caught in the net they have hidden. We need to thank God for stopping those nations who have devoted themselves to enslaving humans under their rule. We need to thank Him for resisting those nations who have decided to try to take freedom from the earth. We need to thank Him for keeping the national boundaries open so we, who serve Him, can go around the world telling everyone about Him and His greatness. We need to thank Him for taking all their leaders and subjecting them to His plans.

Those who have taken leadership positions have relinquished their rights to doing what they choose. Their freedom of will is limited to their own decision of what they are going to do with God’s Son, Christ Jesus; their heart is in His hands. They must do what He desires. They must lead according to His plans. We need to pray that He brings down all who resist Him and His message. Let’s ask Him to allow us and all those who serve Him, to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.

Psa 9:16 (NIV) The LORD is known by His justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands. Higgaion (change to this music style). Selah (pause and meditate on this). We desperately need God’s justice to reign in all the earth. Let’s pray that those who resist the Truth by their wickedness, to fall into the traps they have devised for others. Let’s pray that God brings them down so that they are no longer able to stop His Truth from being proclaimed all over the earth.

Psa 9:17 (NIV) The wicked return to the grave, all the nations that forget God. Let’s pray for the nations that have forgotten God. Let’s pray that the wicked leaders go to the grave, who are being used by Satan. Let’s pray that the enslaved nations be delivered from evil leadership. Let’s pray that they open their gates and let God’s greatness flood into these nations. Let’s pray that God’s people be mightily used by Him to show forth His great love, power, grace, mercy, and provisions. Let’s pray that all the earth will lift up its voice in great praise to His Name. Let’s pray that the wicked fall, and that the righteous shine like the noon day sun. Let’s pray that God’s glory fill all the earth.

Psa 9:18 (NIV) But the needy will not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish. There are so many who are suffering and dying. We need God to allow us and all who are willing to go to them. We need Him to help us reach them with all He has to offer. Let’s commit ourselves to be the body that He can use to do His will in their lives. He will not forget the needs of the needy. We know His greatness. We know He is their answer. We know He loves them with an undying love. We know it isn’t a problem with Him. We know it is a problem with us. Let’s say yes to His response to the hope of the afflicted. Let’s ask Him to use us to do all His will in all their lives. We only have ourselves to give; and, we say yes to Him.

Psa 9:19 (NIV) Arise, O LORD, let not man triumph; let the nations be judged in Your presence. There is a massive effort by Satan to use technology to spread his lies to the nations. The people on this planet are being flooded with messages that approve sin; let’s ask God to not let these men win. Let’s ask Him to destroy those areas of each nation that have devoted themselves to the spreading of sin. Let’s ask Him to bring all these people and areas in all nations who are ministers of sin before His presence. Let’s ask Him to judge them with His great wrath.

Psa 9:20 (NIV) Strike them with terror, O LORD; let the nations know they are but men. Selah (pause and meditate on this). Let’s ask God to bring terror to those who will not repent. Let’s ask Him to reprove those who have bought into sin but want to serve Him. Ask Him to destroy those who will not repent. Ask Him to transform those who have been addicted to sin and will turn to Him. Ask Him to prepare the hearts of all who would accept Him, if given a chance. Ask Him to send His people forth to proclaim His Truth to every person all over the earth.