Surrounded by Enemies, but the Lord is my Refuge.
April 17th 2009.
Mark Hanson.
For Reading and meditation - Psalm 71:1-24
Important verses:
Verse 1: “In You, O LORD, I put my trust; Let me never be put to shame.”
Verse 3: “Be my strong refuge, To which I may resort continually.”
Verses 14-15: “But I will hope continually, And will praise You yet more and more. My mouth shall tell of Your righteousness and Your salvation all the day, For I do not know their limits.”
Verse 20: “You, who have shown me great and severe troubles, Shall revive me again, And bring me up again from the depths of the earth.”
Psalm 71, written by David, shows his great trust in the Lord, a confidence that He will always be with him, and that He is greater than any trouble.
David was well accustomed to having enemies. In his most famous encounter, he faced Goliath. When others would have trusted in superior weapons, David trusted in the Lord.
And this trust is so wonderfully expounded in Psalm 71. When David was being pursued by Saul, David did not take revenge, but waited for the Lord to vindicate him. He trusted in the Lord.
David did not trust in, nor expound, his own skills or righteousness, but only in the Lord’s (v. 14-16).
Sometimes we will seek the way forward, the way to defeat the enemy, the way of escape. Yet at times, at important moments of spiritual growth, we find our own resources, our own plans, our own ways of escape, simply and totally insufficient. We must learn to face the Giant with only a sling, a stone, and the Lord.
When times like this come, we may be tempted to hide. If the difficulties we face are because we are Christian, we may be tempted to cover up, even deny, our faith. Yet Jesus made clear that if we deny Him, He will deny us.
So how can we resist this strong temptation? We must read, meditate upon, and ingest the Word of God. Words such as Psalm 71. David stood strong, he trusted in the Lord. He knew God, and knew that God knew him.
My words cannot make you stand strong. I can be clever with words, but cleverness won’t help. It is the Word, the Bible, that can equip us.
But, if the Bible isn’t with you, it needs to be in you. We will not always have opportunity to open and read our Bibles. We must take opportunity where we have it. And so, when we don’t have it, we can still have it within.
