Daily Devotional Motivational Monday | September 14, 2026
Happy Monday! It’s time for your daily devotional. A group of psalms known as Songs of Degrees, or Songs of Ascent, were sung during pilgrimages to Israel to celebrate the three major feasts. They represent drawing closer to God or ascending higher into His presence. In today’s daily devotional, like the Israelites of ages past, you’re on a spiritual journey to get closer to God.
Going Higher in God
The Songs of Degrees are Psalms 120-134. This unit of psalms represents believers’ journey of faith as they draw closer to God through obedience, pilgrimage, and worship. They’re called ascent psalms because the road to Jerusalem required going up, as it was on Mt. Moriah. It’s a picture of your relationship with God. He meets you where you are, but He invites you to come up higher.
God is the high and lofty One, who dwells in the secret place. In the Bible, mountains symobolize God, for He often spoke from them. Jesus taught on a mountain, prayed on a mountain, and ascended to heaven from a mountain. In your daily devotional, mountains also represent higher dimensions available to you when you walk with God.
Cry Out to God
Psalm 120 is known as a lament. Verse 1 says, “In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me.” Distress is an emotion everyone feels. It’s affliction or pain. The psalmist knows who to turn to in those times. In this life, tears are inevitable, but it’s important who you cry to.
You can either cry to those who can’t help you, or, as the psalmist teaches, cry to the Lord. At the end of the verse, he adds that the Lord heard him. In this daily devotional, know that when you cry out to God, He hears you.
Your God Delivers
The psalmist prays, “Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue.” It’s a comfort to know that the Lord hears prayer, as David declares in Psalm 34:17: “The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth.” The psalmist asks for deliverance from lying and deceitful lips. He speaks of the tongue’s falsehood and how it can wound like sharp arrows seared in hot coals.
Man’s evil nature causes his tongue to create a snare for the righteous. James 3:8 says, “ But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.” David, Joseph, Daniel, and Jeremiah experienced lying lips formed for their destruction. In your daily devotional, God heard their cry and delivered them, meaning your deliverance is sure.
Greater is He Who’s in You
In Verse 5, the psalmist cries, “Woe is me.” Sojourning denotes passing through, not being a permanent resident. Believers don’t belong to this world, but to God; we’re sojourners in life. Mesech and Kedar are perhaps metaphors for suffering. They were the remotest northern and southern territories, respectively, occupied by barbarous men who dwelt apart from God.
These men were wild and clamorous. In the world, you live among unrighteous and evil men. Some are neighbors, co-workers, and leaders. In this daily devotional, God isn’t intimidated by the unrighteous, and neither should you be. For the greater One lives in you, and He’s greater than he who’s in the world.
You’re a Light in the World
In Monday’s daily devotional, the psalmist says he’s among men who hate peace. You’re to live peacably with all men, as much as possible. In today’s daily devotional, you’re to walk with God in the world. When you live in peace, you ascend closer to God.
