5 For You are my hope; O LORD GOD, You are my confidence from my youth. 6By You I have been sustained from my birth; You are He who took me from my mother’s womb; my praise is continually of You. (Ps 71:5-6).
“Prayer of an Old Man for Deliverance,” as the NASB editors have titled this psalm, summarizes it well. To young ears maybe not so much, but in the hearing that comes from age, the picture is clear:
O God, You have taught me from my youth, and I still declare Your wondrous deeds. And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to all who are to come. (Ps 71:17–18).
The psalm writer—was it David, proficient as he was with the harp? (Ps 71:22)—is facing a crisis, age not excusing him from life’s harshness. Yet with a lifetime of trusting in God, he knows from experience that He will protect him. The first words that drip from his quill resonate a life of trust: “In You, O LORD, I have taken refuge” (Ps 71:1). He has in the past, and he continues into his present circumstance. He has done as Paul in the NT instructs: “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you …” (Col 3:16).
The Word “richly dwells” in us when we know the Word of God, believe it to be absolutely trustworthy and rest in it during all trials of life. It becomes a life habit. God in His Word has proven reliable, essential and indispensable. Learning from this, we can say God has sustained us from our birth – are we not here and reading these words at this very moment? Despite life circumstances, broken or disappointing relationships, physical difficulties and sickness, failures and sin, we have made it this far. If there is one thing faith teaches us over the years of walking with the Lord, it is that despite our fears and anxieties, He is the God of the ever-present now. And therein is our confidence.
Nothing can shake us: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38–39).
Because we are loved by God and we have hope in Him, then we can have confidence as we face life’s trials. Nothing can get to us, unless God in His divine sovereignty has allowed it to shape us for praising His Son.
Lord, not in fear or anxiety, I choose to walk in confidence, knowing that my trials give me opportunity to praise You before others for the hope You give me.
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