Planning in Advance to Stay Committed to the Lord
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
Psalms 13:3–6 ESV Read More
This is one of those Psalms that could have been a song that David sang to relieve Saul of the evil spirit that had been afflicting him. It is full of pleading, like the groans of a country song, but ends with victory and resolve.
Of course these rhyme and sound a little different in the original Hebrew language, but there is another part that we might not catch in the translation unless we slow down.
In Hebrew, there are some bits of grammar that convey a commitment to something that is certain to happen in the future but hasn’t. How is that for complicated!? What that means here is that even after 4 lines of growing misery, the singer is committed to trust and praise God.
There have been times in the past that God showed His faithfulness and He does not change. Resolving in advance to trust Him no matter what makes us fearless, ready to obey Him wherever His calling takes us. Friends with cancer or other horrible health issues live out this song as they worship the Lord wherever He leads them.
We can trust in His love. We can rejoice in His salvation. That kind of commitment is the power of God to drive evil away.
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Extra Credit from the Screwtape Letters: “Be not deceived, Wormwood, [the Devil’s cause] is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do [God’s] will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”