Sunday 5 May 2013

Sunday Reading: Psalm 18:1-3

Key Verse: Psalm 18:3
3  I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.

Devotion:
These are the words written by David as he realised that God continued to deliver him from the hands of Saul; Saul being king and able to seemingly do most things was able to get close to David but never to kill him because of God’s protection. Because of David’s past and now his present situation he starts off this psalm with the words “I will love Thee” because he knows that it is purely God’s strength that protection that has kept him alive thus far. He probably looks back on his life at this stage and sees a continuous stream of events where God has protected him in many walks of his life.

When we look back on our lives we too should be able to see many events where we can wonder how we got through the events or the stresses and strains of our own lives. People who refuse to believe in a God will attribute those instances to coincidence or to luck or even fate, but when we look on David’s life we cannot attribute that all to random events in history and chance. God is a God who knows what is going on and is totally in control; whilst we may well break events and cause chaos as we run along, God continues to straighten things out and bring us shouting and kicking into the right place at the right time.

David’s response to this is not to blame God for everything that has gone wrong but to lift up God’s name in praise for all that David sees that God has done for him. David sees everything quite clearly as he probably recounts all of his prayers and matches them up with the things that God has done in his life; for this he praises his God, the God of Israel.

When we begin to realise how much God does in our own lives we can match up our prayers with the answers that God places in our lives. Those answered prayers are what we need to remember so that we too can be strengthened, encouraged and respond much like David, in praise! He also realises that as he continues to lift up his prayers to God, those same prayers are being heard by God and will be answered in ways just as the previous prayers. David knows he has done things wrong in the past but he also knows God continues to answer prayers to those who ask earnestly.

Points to Ponder:
Do you know your past?

Do you know God has always been there too?