Psalm 28:7 The Lord is my strength and my shield;
my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.
My heart leaps for joy
and I will give thanks to him in song.

In several of his Psalms David starts out pretty depressed, but like here, before the end of the Psalm he’s rejoicing. There is remarkable power in deliberately turning to God and releasing your troubles to Him. A frequent lie of the devil is that we are all alone, we have no one to rescue us, and turning to God is following James’ famous instructions: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7) There’s no indication here that David has physically seen the destruction of his foes, but God has given him assurance in his heart that the situation is taken care of. One illustration applies to many areas of life. It we are facing a bright light, what we see is light. If we are facing away from it, we see our own shadow, and if we are close to the light, that shadow can seem all-encompassing. Simply turning to God may not change our immediate circumstances, but it certainly changes our perspective. We are reminded, as David is here, that the Lord is indeed our strength and our shield. That’s important in every situation!

The last time things looked really black for me was about 22 years ago, when our money for constructing this building had run out (for reasons I won’t go into here) and the banks wouldn’t touch us because we hadn’t gone through them to begin with. Frankly, I was even starting to feel suicidal. Then the CEO of the plumbing company that had worked on the building came and suggested that I go around to the different contractors involved and present them with a payment plan, since time payments would be greatly preferrable to default. I did that, and the rest is history. And he wasn’t even a Christian! Simply knowing that God had a plan, even if I couldn’t see it yet, made a huge difference. Since then I have had even more peace and assurance that whatever the immediate situation, God wasn’t in a panic and I had no need to be. As a pastor I deal with a lot of people who find themselves in difficult situations. I may not have any answers, but God does! As Andrae Crouch sang, Jesus is the Answer!

Father, thank You for this reminder. Thank You indeed for being Lord of all, for having Your plans that cover everything. Help me be fully submitted to You so that I may recognize Your guidance and be Your agent for Your will to be done, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!