Save Me (Psalm 3)

“Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him.’ But You, O Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high and answers me from His holy mountain. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear though ten thousands assail me on every side.” (Psalm 3:3-6)

I imagine that many of you have, at some point in your life, found yourself in a place where it felt like everyone – including God – was out to get you. Times when you felt like no matter how many things you “did right,” everything seemed to go wrong (oftentimes all at once). Times when you felt isolated and alone, when even God felt distant. Whether this is the season that you are in right now, or you’ve been here before, know this: you are not alone. 

History is filled to the brim with faithful men and women who chose to worship, putting their trust in God in the midst of incredibly deep, dark and desperate valleys. We are walking the same path as many faithful yet broken saints who have worshipped their way through loss, sickness, grief, pain, doubt, persecution, disappointment, and even death. Saints who have declared with their whole heart: “The night is dark, but the Lord is good.”

King David found himself in one of these dark nights when he wrote Psalm 3. David penned this beautifully gut wrenching worship song while he was literally fleeing from his rebellious son who had launched a full on coup against him. His seemingly inevitable demise was knocking at the door and yet his confidence in the power and presence of God didn’t waver.

He was surrounded by enemies, betrayed by those he once trusted, and grieving over a son who had turned against him, and yet David worshiped. Even while crying out to the Lord for deliverance from his many foes, his ultimate hope was not in the deliverance but in God Himself. The unchanging character and commitment of God to His people has the power to carry us through even the most hopeless circumstances.

What we see in Psalm 3 is David battling fear through worship. In the first few verses, he names his terror; he calls it what it is, but then almost immediately afterwards he says, “But You O Lord, are a shield around me, my glory and the One who lifts my head” (Ps 3:3). He has no assurance that his enemies won’t prevail and no guarantee that anything will change, but David pivots away from his attacks and how they make him feel, and turns toward the unchanging truth of who God is. He declares what is true and allows His heart to rest in that reality. 

Fear is real. Anxiety is real. It is human to feel overwhelmed by hard circumstances. But what is even more real is the truth of who God has been, is and will be for all of eternity. This is why we can hope in Him when we walk through valleys that make absolutely no sense to us. He is the One who has promised to never leave or forsake us. He is the One who told us that in this world there would be trouble, but that we could take heart because He has overcome the world. He is the One who told us that we might walk through the fire but we would not be consumed. 

The gift of worship is that it helps us to center God and de-center the ever changing and temporal circumstances of our lives. 

God is mighty to save us! He gets a lot of glory in our salvation. He delights in saving us. We see that delight displayed in full force at the cross of Christ, where God demonstrated His extravagant love for us by offering up His own Son to atone for our sin. In this life, we have no way of fully knowing why God allows us to walk through the valleys that He does. We have no way of knowing how long the night will last. But because of our eternal security in Christ, we can walk through whatever comes with the unshakable hope that our salvation is near – whether it comes in this life or the next!