Run With It: Too Mighty for Me

Psalm 18:1-6 ESV

“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.

“The cords of death encompassed me;

the torrents of destruction assailed me;

the cords of Sheol entangled me;

the snares of death confronted me.

“In my distress I called upon the Lord;

to my God I cried for help.

From his temple he heard my voice,

and my cry to him reached his ears.”

Who is our enemy? Satan. And, what is one of his greatest weapons that he forges against us? Fear! And, included in that is doubt, because fear is the opposite of faith.

Fear, if we let it take hold of us, is doubting God. It is not trusting God with our lives and with our circumstances. It is saying to God that he is not capable of handling what we are going through. It is also bringing into question his faithfulness to us, his people.

But Satan will rock our world in an attempt to make us afraid. He will throw all kinds of things our way to try to get us to give way to fear and to doubt God’s sovereignty over our lives. He will attempt, through circumstances in our lives, to get us to panic and to take matters into our own hands. Because then he has us right where he wants us.

Right now the world at large is experiencing such a time as this when Satan is playing havoc with people’s minds and emotions. Satan is stirring things up big time in hopes to take captive all those who would cave to fear. But, we must not give in to him. We must not let him have his way with us.

We must, instead, focus our minds and hearts on the Lord. We must pray. We must seek God’s face in these trying times. And, it is imperative that we are in the Word of God daily taking it into our hearts and minds, in context, and that we are listening to what the Lord has to say to us through this trial. For, the Lord does have things he wants to tell us if we are willing to listen, and if we are willing to heed his counsel.

So, rather than panicking and being afraid to live our normal lives, we need to draw on the strength of the Lord and seek his counsel and his direction for our lives. We need to call on him to help us and to show us the way he would have us to go. And, we must not give way to fear!!

Psalm 18:7-12 ESV

“Then the earth reeled and rocked;

the foundations also of the mountains trembled

and quaked, because he was angry.

Smoke went up from his nostrils,

and devouring fire from his mouth;

glowing coals flamed forth from him.

He bowed the heavens and came down;

thick darkness was under his feet.

He rode on a cherub and flew;

he came swiftly on the wings of the wind.

He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him,

thick clouds dark with water.

Out of the brightness before him

hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds.”

When we call on the Lord for help in our times of distress, if we are his sheep who are listening to him and who are following him in obedience, he will hear us, and he will answer. And, he will come against our enemies, and he will reroute them. And, I am speaking of spiritual enemies here, not physical ones, although he may do that with physical enemies, too.

For, he doesn’t promise us that we won’t have to suffer. He doesn’t promise us that we won’t have to go through difficult times, or that Satan won’t be on our warpath. But, he does promise to never leave us or forsake us. And, he does promise to be our refuge, our strength, and our peace and comfort in times of trouble and distress.

So, he will fight for us. He will ward off our enemy. So, he gave us his armor to put on each day in order to put into practice what he has given us to fight off our enemy, too (Ephesians 6:10-20).

So, we need to take up (put on, apply to our lives) that shield of faith, and not give way to fear. We need to take up that sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, by studying it in context, and by applying it to our daily lives. And, we need to apply that belt of truth to our lives by being ones who tell the truth, and by being ones who fight off Satan’s lies with the truth, too.

Psalm 18:16-19 ESV

“He sent from on high, he took me;

he drew me out of many waters.

He rescued me from my strong enemy

and from those who hated me,

for they were too mighty for me.

They confronted me in the day of my calamity,

but the Lord was my support.

He brought me out into a broad place;

he rescued me, because he delighted in me.”

If we want to be rescued from our enemy Satan, and from his attacks against us, and his deception, and his tactics he uses against us to try to get us to doubt God, then we have to make the Lord our refuge and our strength. And, we have to stop putting our dependency in our own flesh or in the human flesh of others to save us.

And, we must surrender our lives to the Lord, allow him to work his will in our hearts and lives, and then follow his lead wherever he takes us. For, he is allowing the events of this trial we are all going through in our lives in order to purify us and to make us holy and to conform us to his likeness.

He won’t necessarily rescue us from this trial, though he may, but he will rescue us through it from ourselves and from worldly mindsets and from apathy and from rebellious ways and idolatry, etc. For, not one of us is absolutely perfect, no matter how godly we are in our walks with the Lord. Daily we still have to die to the flesh and put on Christ and his holiness.

So, as we are going through this time of difficulty, let’s get our eyes off of our circumstances, and let us focus on our relationships with our Lord. Let’s draw near to God in all seriousness, seeking his counsel and wisdom in what steps he would have us to take. And, if we have been casual in any way about our walks of faith, let us repent of those ways and now renew our relationships with the Lord in full surrender to him and to his ways.

Let us all take this opportunity to get really serious about God, and to be about his business in sharing his gospel so that many will be saved from slavery to sin, and so that they will have eternal life with God.

Nearer, My God, to Thee

Lyrics: Sarah F. Adams, pub. 1841

Vs. 6: Edward H. Bickersteth, Jr.

Music: Lowell Mason, 1856