O Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me ‘God will not deliver him.’
But you are a shield around me, O Lord, you bestow glory on me and lift up my head. To the Lord I cry aloud, and He answers me…’. (Psalm 3:1-4)
Once again, David is surrounded by enemies, including even one of his own sons. It is a time of extreme danger and he feels totally exposed, totally vulnerable. His enemies’ latest tactic is to try to sow doubt in his mind about God’s ability, or will, to rescue him (v2)
At this moment David has to make a choice: 1: listen to ‘common sense’, to the voice of reason, believe what everyone is telling him and surrender, casting himself on the mercy of men: ‘you know it makes sense’.
Or 2: stand firm in his irrational, unreasonable convictions, stand alone on the faith that everyone else says is hopeless, foolish, doomed to disappointment and disaster.
So what does David choose? He cries out to the Lord his God, the unseen, unknowable God, and guess what? Unbelievably, He answers him! (v4)
When we make the right choice, calling out to the God who alone can rescue, the result is peace. Such peace, in David’s case, that he can lie down and sleep like a baby in the presence of ‘tens of thousands’ of raging enemies (v5-6).
Sometimes things can look so bleak that there seems to be no way out, no way forward. But however dark our path, there is always One, and only One, who can bring deliverance; One, and only One, who proved His infinite love by giving His own life for us; One and only One, who proved His infinite power by rising from the dead on that first Easter morning. And One who releases infinite blessing to all who receive Him (v8).
Make the right choices today.
