Sept 8 - Psalm 18:46 (Part 2)

The LORD lives!

Blessed be my rock!

May the God of

my salvation be exalted!

Psalm 18:46

In part one of our examination of Psalm 18, David cried to the Lord for help. In part two, here’s how God answered …

7 Then the earth quaked ... because of his anger.

9 He opened the heavens and came down ...

11 He shrouded himself in darkness, ...

with dense rain clouds.

12 [But] the brilliance of his presence

broke through the clouds. ...

14 His lightning flashed ... He shot his arrows.

[He] scattered his enemies ...

16 He reached down from heaven and rescued me ...

God absolutely quakes with anger when there’s injustice in this world.

But here’s the hard part … we don’t always see it. We don’t always see his answer. Sometimes God’s presence seems cloaked in clouds and darkness. Has God ever seemed slow or missing to you?

When trouble comes, we want the answer we want … and we want it when we want it.

•      Now, God sometimes literally and visibly saves us from the storm. That’s what we’re always hoping, and when we can see God’s hand in our timing, it’s awesome.
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•       But that’s not the only form of rescue. Other times, God saves us through the storms. God often helps us ride out the violence of the waves and the violence of the world. His answer may not have come in the form we hoped or the timing we wished for, but it’s no less kind or gracious.
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•      A final way in which God saves us is in spite of the storm. Now, this is by far our least favorite form of rescue – but let me be clear, it’s no less gracious. Too often evil seems to win. Too often on earth there’s destruction, death, and defeat. Without a confidence in heaven, we could literally have no hope. But when we cry out in faith, God will always “reach down from heaven and rescue” his faithful. Now, his answer may not be defined as victory in human terms. But whenever and however he brings us up to heaven that’s victory indeed.

In spite of the trials of this earth, there is always hope and victory with God. We may not always see him, he may seem “shrouded … in darkness,” but he is always and definitely there.

And when we claim that faith in unseeing but unwavering faith, we inherit all of the exclamation points in verse 46.

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who has

a personal lifeguard