"I love You, O Lord, my strength."
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge;
My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
And I am saved from my enemies.
I'd been reading Psalm 18 and at verse 3, I stopped to write down what I considered to be a few of my own recent personal "enemies." They weren't physical things of course - certainly nothing like what David describes in verses 4-6 - but they were definitely some tough emotional "enemies," and they definitely felt threatening to my heart and peace of mind. However as I was recording them, I started thinking that I really needed to change my perspective a bit. The things I was dealing with weren't just special and exclusive to me but are faced by all humans at one time or another in life, and maybe I needed to look at the damage Satan was trying to do to my heart through them as the real enemy, not the emotions themselves.
The thing is, the blessed assurance we receive from Psalm 18 is that when we decide on seeing the hard things through in faith, God rises up to help us. We may not see it or feel it in the moments of pain, but David describes a God in Psalm 18 who fights for His children in a very powerful and real way. We don't live in the age David did and the ways God fights for us are different now in certain ways, but the same God Who delivered David promises to deliver us. He may refine us through our circumstances. He may still let us experience heartache and some incredibly painful situations. But whatever He allows we can trust will not only be for our good, but will NEVER be a waste - and that is such an amazing, compassionate, and beautiful promise. And whatever He makes us walk through we can know that, if we humble ourselves to Him, He will fight for us -- our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer. Blessed be the name of the Lord!!
The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock;
And exalted be the God of my salvation,
The God who executes vengeance for me,
And subdues peoples under me.
.......
♥