ME AND GOD?

Me and God? Or should it be God and me? I was reading Psalm 57 and it was a great comfort to me because I was feeling "puny." Then upon thinking about it more, I realized that there is a great truth in this Psalm.

Psalm 57:1,2:

Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.

I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things for me.

The truth is about TRUST. The word for trust is the Hebrew word, chasah. It means to flee for refuge. So in verse 1 there are two uses of "fleeing for refuge." The picture in the Psalms often is that God is a mighty ROCK and in order to trust in Him, we need to go to climb the Rock, find an overhanging cliff and sit under it, being totally protected from the weather, the storm, the wind. In this verse the place of refuge is the shadow of His wings. God doesn't have wings, but it is an implied comparison with a mother bird like an eagle sheltering and brooding upon her hatchlings. What a comforting place to be!

What I never saw before was that in order to have mercy, I had to do the fleeing, I had to go to God for the pardon. His desire is "to relieve the miserable" and "to deliberately withhold judgment" (that's mercy), but MY job is to trust until the calamities be passed over. That means, GOD AND ME, not me and God. Whenever there has been pressure or times of anxiety of any sort, I have reached out with prayer, petitions, intercession, all the while expecting that God will somehow come down and get with ME and work things out. I think it should be reversed! When I have "calamities" -- pressures of any kind, I need to flee to him -- to TRUST --that HE will be the protector, the one who gives mercy, the shelter in the time of storm! I believe that I still thought he would just come and help me somehow to figure it all out!

The calamities that David was talking about in this Psalm had to do with Saul chasing him around in the wilderness. That had been going on for a number of years and it was "getting old." But instead of praying to God that he would come down and take care of the situation, David prayed that He would be merciful to him, reminding God that he was taking refuge in Him. In other words, David went to God! That's trust, that's the place to be until situations get sorted out. Certainly David did not just sit under a big rock the entire time Saul was trying to kill him. But he never tried to search out a way to solve the problem himself. He relied implicitly upon God to bring to pass the promises he had been given about being king, about being in the blood line of the Messiah. As it says in Acts, he "set the Lord always before my face." He kept the promises in his mind, at the same time acting on the TRUST that the solution would come from God, not him.

I will cry unto God most high, who "performeth" all things for me. God WILL go into action when we trust! When I flee for refuge to him as the source of solutions, then I can have another kind of trust in Hebrew, batach. Batach means confidence, assurance. A wonderful teacher, Elena Whiteside, once wrote an article on batach and listed 16 benefits when the believer trusts God. Here are some great verses to look up and to put in our hearts:

1. God will be entreated of him; He'll hear his prayers; He'll help and deliver the believer's enemies into his hand -- I Chronicles 5:20.

2. God will deliver him -- Psalms 22:4.

3. The one who trusts will not be confounded -- Psalms 22:5.

4. The one who trusts will not slide (or slip) -- Psalms 26:1.

5. The one who trusts will be helped -- Psalms 28:7.

6. His heart will rejoice -- Psalms 33:21.

7. Mercy will compass him about -- Psalms 32:10.

8. The one who trusts shall dwell in the land -- Psalms 37:3.

9. The one who trusts shall be fed--Psalms 37:3.

10. The one who trusts will be like a green olive tree in the house of God --Psalms 52:8.

11. The one who trusts will be blessed -- Jeremiah 17:7.

12. The one who trusts will not be afraid of bad news-- Psalms 112:7.

13. The one who trusts will have the wherewithal to answer anyone that reproaches him --Psalms 119:42.

14. The one who trusts will be like Mount Zion: unmovable and everlasting -- Psalms 125:1.

15. The one who trusts will be happy -- Proverbs 16:20.

16. The one who trusts will have perfect peace -- Isaiah 26:3.

What a great list! And I am sure it is not complete. Can you add to the list from your own experiences with trusting God?

Here are a just few more promises that fleeing for refuge to God and not expecting Him to come to you first provide:

Psalms 5:11:

But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee.

For thou, LORD, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield.

Psalms 18:30:

As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the LORD is tried: he is a buckler to all those that trust in him.

Psalms 31:19, 20:

Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!

Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.

Psalm 36:7, 8:

How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.

They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.

There are many more verses. I needed to write these out so that I would not be discouraged in the "wilderness," but could trust as David did. One of my most favorites Psalms is this last verse. I pray that you will take comfort from this sharing and to realize that you, too, can flee for refuge "under his wings" and gain that confidence of GOD AND ME.

Psalms 91:4-6:

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.