Put your trust in the Lord!

[Psalms 9]

          Our despair makes us to long for God.  Our despair leads to longing, and our longing makes us to hope in God, so we praise God.  So the psalmist says in Psalms 42:5, 11; 43:5 – “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence.”  Here, the psalmist is proclaiming to his soul, "Hope in God," and this means that we are to commit ourselves to trust in the Lord.  In the end, even if we are in despair, God the Holy Spirit will turn that despair into longing for God, making us more and more to trust in Him.  So the psalmist David says in Psalms 9:10, “those who know Your name will put their trust in You.”  I would like to meditate on three things based on the words of Psalms 9 about how those who trust in the Lord act:

            First, those who trust in the Lord give thanks to the Lord with all their heart and are glad and exult in Him.

                Look at Psalms 9:1-2: “I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart; I will tell of all Your wonders.  I will be glad and exult in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.”  The reason what David gave thanks to the Lord with all his heart and is glad and exult in Him was because He defeated the enemies of David and their nations.  What David was grateful for and was glad and exult in Him was not because his enemies were defeated but because God manifested His justice and greatness (Park).

                I asked myself why I give thanks to God and am glad in Him.  Is it because I have experienced who God is or what He does for me?  When I asked this question to myself, I couldn’t deny myself but had to acknowledge that I didn’t trust in the Lord completely  too many times.  The reason is because my trust in God isn’t based on who He is but what He does.  How can I know all that God does?  That’s why if I trust in the Lord based on what He does, then I will be tempted to trust in others or other things than Him and sin against God because I cannot understand all His does. 

                Those who truly trust in the Lord gives thanks to Him with all their heart and are glad because God reveals Himself to them.  David was able to give thanks to the Lord with all his heart because he understood and experienced God’s righteous judgment (v. 4).  This is because God's justice was manifested through His righteous judgment.  David gave thanks to the Lord with all his heart and was glad in the midst of his present suffering and persecution as he reflected on the past incident in which the Lord, who maintained David’s just cause and sat on the throne to judge righteously (v. 4), rebuked and destroyed the wicked enemy forever (vv. 5, 6).  We too should look back on our past and remember our God and what He did for us in the midst of our present suffering and adversity and give thanks to God with all our hearts and be glad and go through our present suffering and adversity.

Second, those who trust in the Lord make Him their stronghold.

                Look at Psalms 8:9 – “The LORD also will be a stronghold for the oppressed, A stronghold in times of trouble.”  When David was in a situation like “the gates of death” and was suffering from those who hate him (v. 13), not only he gave thanks to the Lord with all his heart and was glad by remembering the past experience of God, His justice, he made the Lord as his stronghold in his near death situation.  In verse 9, David said that the Lord was “A stronghold in times of trouble,” where the world “trouble” came from the etymology that means “it is cut of” (Park).  In other words, David made the Lord his own stronghold in the absence of all hope.  How precious is this faith?  It is the expression of David's precious faith that he made God as his stronghold and trusted in Him when was near the gates of death.

                Like David, we must make the Lord our stronghold and trust in Him only when all our hopes in the world are cut off and there seems no hope.  This is because our Lord is a God who does not forsake those who seek him (v. 10).  Also, we must make the Lord our stronghold, the Lord who doesn’t forget the cry of afflicted (v. 12) and who sees our affliction and is gracious to us (v. 13).  Since the Lord doesn’t forget us, cannot forget us and our hope won’t perish forever (v. 18), we must make the Lord our stronghold.  And we must take refuge in Him in times of trouble.  And we must get His protection.

            Third and last, those who trust in the Lord praise Him.

                Look at Psalms 9:2, 11, 14: “I will be glad and exult in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.  …  Sing praises to the LORD, who dwells in Zion; Declare among the peoples His deeds.  …  That I may tell of all Your praises, That in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in Your salvation.”  David was pledge to praise God in the hope that the Lord, who was his stronghold, wouldn’t forsake him but deliver him from the gates of death.  He who believed that the Lord would lead him from “the gates of death” (v. 13) to “the gates of the daughter of Zion” (v. 14) couldn’t stop but compelled to praise Him.  This praise of David in the Old Testament reminded me of the words of the New Testament Acts 16:25 where Paul and Silas praying and praising God in prison: “But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.”  Then Paul and Silas were saved (delivered) from the prison.  Therefore, we can also praise God in any adversity and hardship.  When we are in trouble, we depend on God more because our faith is little.  As time goes by and whatever hardship or difficulty we face, we should rely on Him.

                We who know the name of the Lord trust in the Lord.  And we who trust in the Lord give thanks to God with all our hearts and are glad in our present suffering and adversity as we remember what God did for us and meditate on our experience of who God is.  As we do so, we make the Lord as our stronghold and take refuge in Him.  Especially, when all the hopes of the world are cut off, we put our hope only in the Lord and praise Him.  Then God, who dwells is praise, will manifest His glory and power through us.

Making the Lord as my stronghold,

James Kim

(Confessing that as time goes by I can only trust in the Lord)