May I Present...Psalm 18

Psalm 18:1-3 (NIV)

‘I love you, Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I have been saved from my enemies.’

I stumbled across Psalm 18 when I was fourteen years old. I didn’t really understand how to read the Bible in a meaningful way at that age, but my family and I were experiencing one of the most heart-breaking and tumultuous seasons of our lives and, if I’m honest, I was desperate for some kind of assurance that God was real and that everything would be okay. So, I opened my Bible, started flicking through the pages and the rest is history.

I can now admit that random page-flicking is not the ideal way to go about reading God’s word, but in that moment all those years ago, I received deep encouragement, comfort and hope as I started to absorb the words: Psalm 18 will now forever be significant for me. For this reason, I’d love to dig into it this week, in the hope that the words that inspired resilience, comfort and deeper trust in God in one of my darkest hours, would encourage and speak to all of us as we continue to navigate the trials we are currently living through.

With that said, in the opening verses of this Psalm, David declares that God is his strength, his foundation, his deliverer and his protection and passionately declares his love for God in response to all God has done for him. Right now everything seems upside-down, uncertain and surreal. Many of us are desperate for steadfastness, deliverance and rest. Thankfully, these opening lines remind us that all of these things can be found in God.

So, I’d love to start by simply encouraging you to re-read these verses throughout the week, standing firm in the knowledge that God isn’t going anywhere.

Prayer – Father God, thank you that you are the steadfast and unchanging one. Thank you that when the enemies of anxiety, unemployment, illness and exhaustion threaten to overwhelm us on every side we can take refuge in you. Deliver us we pray, in Jesus Name.