“Thank you, Lord Jesus!”
Meditation for the week of Week of February 19, 2012
Psalms 56:3 Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You (The Most High God).
David was running from Saul. Saul should have been his friend since David had served Him faithfully. However, Saul knew that David was God’s choice to replace him on the throne. Saul wanted his son to replace him. As a result, Saul had become a dangerous man. He was trying to defy the known will of God and therefore David had to go for his plans to succeed. When David fled from Saul, he found refuge in the wrong place. He went to the enemies of the people of God and tried to hide out. It didn’t work. Because of Saul’s sin and rebellion, David was on the run and and had looked for refuge where there was none. Now David “comes to himself (Luke 15:17)” and realizes where His trust really needs to be. He is afraid even though he shouldn’t be because he has been promised the kingdom by the Lord through Samuel and hasn’t gotten it yet. When he gets his act together he says, “Whenever I am afraid I will trust in You (that is, in the Most High God).”
Truly trusting someone is very difficult. First we have to be convinced of the trustworthy nature of the person we are to trust. Even when the person is trustworthy, most of us have more confidence in ourselves than we do in others. When things go wrong in my house or with my car or with my finances, I have a tendency to assume that I have done something wrong. I have often asked myself why that is my first response to a problem. I think it is because I assume that I should have things under control. I should be the fix it guy and if I were doing my job right, I wouldn’t have unexpected problems because I should have foreseen the problem and prevented it. In other words, my trust is in myself and it hurts when I find out that I cannot make the world work like I think it should. Because of this mind set, I cannot and will not ask for help until I realize that I cannot fix whatever the problem is myself. I think David had my problem. David had not caused his problem with Saul but neither could he “fix” it. Only the Lord could fix the problem. David needed to trust the Lord, and ultimately He got his eye back on the One who is dependable and he trusted the Lord to protect himself from Saul.
Trust in the Lord brings a lot of blessings. It provides salvation for eternity. It provides us a home in heaven after we die. It gives us rest from our own anxieties. It makes us children of God. It changes our thinking processes. Some people seem to think that trusting in the Lord is easy. I found it to be difficult before I was saved, and I find it to be difficult now that I am saved. I could not trust in the Lord for salvation until I found out that there was absolutely nothing I could do to be saved. I was like Paul and his company on that stormy voyage in Acts 27: 20 where we read, “Now when neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest beat on us, all hope that we would be saved was finally given up.” When all hope was lost, the Lord was able to step in and save them. I remember coming to that point spiritually. At that point, I was able to trust in the Lord because I was no longer trying to trust in myself. The Lord didn’t let me take any credit for my salvation The only thing I could do then and the only thing I can do now is say, “Thank you Lord Jesus!”
Trusting in the Lord for salvation is just the beginning of a new relationship with the Lord. I have found that trusting in the Lord for the problems of life is an ongoing learning experience. I don’t think I am alone in having trouble with this matter of trust because I hear people say, “Well there is just nothing more that we can do, we will just have to trust the Lord!” I think that means that trusting the Lord is normally the last thing we do, it is not the first thing as it should be. Again, we don’t trust in the Lord when we are still trusting in ourselves. But when all hope is lost, then and only then do we turn to the Lord and find refuge.
Trust has to have someone or something to trust in, that is, the object of our trust has to be dependable. When it comes to trusting people in this life, that is difficult because we all fail God and others at times. But we can trust the Lord. He is our Creator, our Redeemer, and our friend if we are really trusting Him. He will not fail. When we finally realize that He is the only One who is truly dependable and He does have the desire and the ability to meet our every need, then we will be able to truthfully say, “Thank you!”
Bruce Collins