Thought for the Day 17/02/21 - WAIT!

AUDIO

'Trust me!' says the politician ... how do you respond?

They want you to TRUST them?

Do you? 

Will you?

This raises a bigger question

Who are you going to trust? 

Who CAN you really trust?

We can't live without trust!

We're living in an age of misinformation, disinformation and mistrust.

But you can't entirely live like that all the time, because 

• we are not self-sufficient and able to do everything we need for ourselves 
• we are not totally omni-competent with the ability to do everything that might be necessary, and
• we are not completely self-confident, which might well be something we've learned from our previous failures or short-comings!

This all adds up to the real-life reality that there comes a time when we need to be able to trust someone else for the things we can't do for ourselves.

When David wrote Psalm 40 he had had LOTS of experiences like that!

But this Psalm is not a grim but an encouraging one. 

The psalmist combines 

• a song of thanksgiving for a recent act of divine deliverance (vv. 1-11) with 
  
  
• a confident petition for renewed divine intervention (vv. 12-17).
  
  

Here's how he tells us what his experience has been:

"I relied completely on the Lord,
and he turned toward me
and heard my cry for help."

                                 Psalm 40:1

Reliance

If you look at the original  Hebrew text, then 'Relying, I relied on the LORD', is what David says. He is repeating the word to emphasise it ... complete reliance what's in mind.

It's like that moment when you are roped up to abseil down a cliff, everything is checked and seems safe ... but now you need to sit back into your harness, walk back over the edge and wait as your body rocks back into space before the rope takes the weight.

When David was in trouble and shifted his weight back onto God alone, he discovered God was firmly attached at the end of David's rope.

"He turned toward me and heard my cry for help"

What did that look like in practice?

This wasn't that annoying phrase that so often gets used to deflect an objection without dealing with it whilst still seeming to be nice: 'I hear you'. 

'God heard' here means that He heard the cry and acted on it.

How did He act?

Firstly, there's a Swift Water Rescue

"He lifted me out of the watery pit,

out of the slimy mud.
He placed my feet on a rock
and gave me secure footing."

An authoritative source tells us what David is talking about:

Heb “cistern of roaring.” 

The Hebrew noun בּוֹר (bor, “cistern, pit”) is used metaphorically here of Sheol, the place of death, which is sometimes depicted as a raging sea (see Ps 18:4, 15-16). 

The noun שָׁאוֹן (shaʾon, “roaring”) refers elsewhere to the crashing sound of the sea’s waves (see Ps 65:7)

It felt like drowning in a raging torrent ... David had been in a BAD place!

Secondly, there's a musical premiere

The rescue David experienced totally transformed his outlook ... from crying out in the face of imminent death in a raging torrent to euphoric, joyful song!

"He gave me reason to sing a new song,
praising our God.
May many see what God has done,
so that they might swear allegiance to him and trust in the Lord."

That's some transformation!

The Point: relying on God transforms human situations

That pit had been a bad place to be, and rescue felt good!

Relying on God has brought David from crying out to singing.

"He gave me reason to sing a new song,
praising our God."

It's great news and he's telling us for a reason.

The Takeaway: good news is for prayerful sharing

When you get good news you want to share it, how much more when God has intervened decisively in our lives, picked us up, put our feet on a rock and given us songs in our heart?

"May many see what God has done,

so that they might swear allegiance to him and trust in the Lord."