“To the Lord I cry aloud,
and he answers me from his holy hill.”
~Psalm 3:4 (NIV).
The contentions of life come thick and fast at times, don’t they. Whilst we mightn’t be chased into caves or always need to flee from family members aggrieved at us like David did, the situations of life are sure to paint us into the corners of our existence every once in a while.
Some people routinely run to God when things get tough—and this is surely David’s sentiment through the psalms. They take their refuge, truly, in God.
Psalm 3 is one step further on. It’s ‘gone to God,’ and in the ways of implied, assured trust.
Going to God in Confidence
Many of us have run to God in fear and trepidation; we go to God and say our prayers, and still we don’t believe—so the worries cling. We try here to do God’s job, for we don’t understand (in that moment) that we must leave the concern with God. That takes some mastery of continual mental effort. This is the mind cooperating with, and augmenting, faith.
When we read Psalm 3 we get the distinct sense that David, whilst he’s running, is still fully and resiliently confident in God’s coming through for him—via God’s will, and not his own.
This is no small leap.
We, on the other hand, will often ‘design’ our very own ways we wish for God to deliver us; it’s our nature to see one, two or three options for deliverance and then desire to have it ‘done’ like that, re-running through our minds that imagery, never really thinking of the plethora of other permeations that might occur in that actual situation we’re in. Then we become surprised just about every time God comes through in other ways, always knowing what is genuinely best for us, certainly over the longer term.
David, however, goes to God confidently—without the worry of how the deliverance will actually take place.
Leaving “It” With God
So, we come back again to that thing that plagues pretty much all of us. We must leave our stuff with God.
And this is pure and simple trust. It is the will of the mind to decide to trust, and for this decision to have its way with us, especially as we now create new mental pathways—new frontiers of thinking and dealing with life.
God is to be the foundation of our confidence.
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
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