Psalms 3:1-8

All of us will face difficult days in our lives.  Some of those difficulties are of our own making due to our sinfulness.  Sometimes we face hardship because we live in a sin cursed world and that simply causes circumstances that are not pleasant for us.  There are other times that we are persecuted by sinful men because of our faithfulness to God.  No matter what the cause of our difficult days, the solution is the same: we must take them to the Lord and leave them with Him.  He is the source of our strength and the only reliable resource we have for rescue.  David has experienced great difficulty in His life for all three of the reasons mentioned above.  The title of this Psalm lets us know that he wrote it while fleeing from his own son Absalom.  In many ways this came about as a result of his sin with Bathsheba.  However, he is also running from a very sinful and arrogant man.  Even though David was to blame for his circumstances; that fact did not keep him from taking them to the Lord.

WE WILL HAVE TROUBLES: When sinners live with sinners on a sin cursed planet; we can expect that there will be troubles and lot of them.  David finds himself in a terrible place, having to flee from his own son and being surrounded by people who are no longer loyal to him.  It seems that his death in inevitable and there are many people around him who are saying that God does not care for him and cannot or will not help him.  This is a very common situation.  People often try to discourage us when we are down and one of the most common ways that they will do that is by casting doubt on the faithfulness of God.  We will even hear ourselves saying that we do not deserve the help of God because of the sin we have committed.  The truth is that we are right.  We do not deserve the help of God.  However, God’s help does not depend upon our deserving; it depends on His grace.  During troublesome times we must not be intimidated by the size of our enemies, the lies of our adversaries or the doubts of our own minds.  We must learn to stand firm in the face of troubles.


WE MUST HAVE TRUST: The key to overcoming troubles in our lives is simply to trust the Lord.  We do not deserve His love, His protection or His deliverance; but He is our refuge none the less.  He wants us to recognize our weakness and is most glorified by us when we simply trust Him.  We must all come to the place where we recognize that we do not have any hope besides the hope we can find in Him.  The only other alternative is to try to fight things out in our own strength or worry endlessly about what might happen to us.  David was able to fall asleep at night and be at peace during the day because He cried out to the Lord for help and then trusted the Lord to take care of Him.  Too often, we try before we cry.  We try to resolve the problem in the strength of our own flesh.  We try to ignore the problem.  We try to blame others for the problem.  We need to stop trying to fix things on our own and start crying out to the Lord who is mighty and able to save us.  When we truly trust the Lord, He will bring us peace, rest and joy.

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