Encouragement: Reveal your light and your faithfulness!

Here is your daily encouragement words and thoughts. Today I bring you encouragement from Psalm 43:1-5

43:1 Vindicate me, O God!
Fight for me against an ungodly nation!
Deliver me from deceitful and evil men!
2 For you are the God who shelters me.
Why do you reject me?
Why must I walk around mourning
because my enemies oppress me?
3 Reveal your light and your faithfulness!
They will lead me,
they will escort me back to your holy hill,
and to the place where you live.
4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
to the God who gives me ecstatic joy,
so that I express my thanks to you, O God, my God, with a harp.
5 Why are you depressed, O my soul?
Why are you upset?
Wait for God!
For I will again give thanks
to my God for his saving intervention.

Biblical Studies Press. (2006; 2006). The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Ps 43:1-5). Biblical Studies Press.

One of my mentors in Christ once told me: "When God has something really important to say to us from His word he repeats it."

Well waiting on the Lord must be really important. In our psalm today our writer must have been really feeling the heat of the moment. Often when we are in the middle of our valley or tough time it may seem like a long time that we have to wait on the Lord.

This psalm gives us a good example of what to do in our time of trouble. First we get the problem off our chests. We exclaim the nature of our problem and then reach into our faith experience and claim what we know God has promised us. "For you are the God who shelters me."

The psalm then suggest that we may slip back into the challenge of our situation and start to question God further like "why is this taking so long." Like the psalm suggests, we need to catch ourselves questioning and we need to grab hold of our faith drawing on our experience with our faithful God, to lift ourselves up to worship him in the face of the oppression of our situation.

When we get to that state then we can start questioning ourselves. "Why are you depressed, O my soul? Why are you upset?" and we can answer ourselves with the instruction to "Wait for God! For I will again give thanks to my God for his saving intervention."

We have a God who is faithful and true. Who will enter all situations no matter how bad and make something of them. Again we may not see God's intervention in "the now", in the current moment. But when we look back in our rear view mirror we will see Gods grace intervening on our situation.

Will the result be exactly as we ask, maybe, then again maybe not. God in his wisdom has full view of the canvas he paints. He will use the situation for maximum gain for his purpose in his story. The story that is real and eternal.

Wait on the Lord! Trust Him. Receive his peace. Receive it in your moment of despair when all is wrong. He will carry you and you will make it to His holy hill to be with Him for ever.

Amen

Music Encouragement Praise You In This Storm