Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
Many of David’s psalms begin with great lamenting and cries to the Lord for help or vindication, but inevitably they conclude with optimism, words of encouragement, a heart that hopes in the Lord, or a declaration of trust in the God of his salvation. Psalm 27 covers all such features but unfolds in a different way. The Psalmist begins with a trustworthy declaration: “The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” God is the Father of lights and the Light of all lights, and David’s proclamation identifies him as a man who proved this to be true. God is faithful. He has delivered in the past and will do so in the future. When faith falters or hope is lost, it gives room for fear, but when God is in control, fear evaporates like the mist in the morning sun, as faith is exercised. Although the psalmist quickly admits that his enemies encompass him round about and that war is breaking out all around him, this Psalm expresses a genuine trust in God. David does not dismiss the cunning tactics of the enemy or become complacent in himself, but sets His eyes on God, and trusts in the one thing that will deliver him from the snare of the fowler and the deadly pestilence. David has learned that God may delay his deliverances and His answer to prayer may be postponed, but God’s delays do not always mean His refusal. God often suspends His plans and allows us to wait for answers to prayer as a test of faith and to produce patient endurance in His people and greater glory for Himself. The lesson that David learned throughout his life, is that when God is our light and our salvation, we have nothing to fear. We are to be stout-hearted and very courageous in Him. We are to maintain trust and hope, accompanied by grateful thanks, even when surrounded by difficulties and danger. David had learned from experience, that God is faithful to His people, and will never leave us nor abandon us. Even though friends and family may forsake us, God has promised to deliver us from all evil. Patient endurance, as we wait for the Lord to work in the difficult circumstances of life, encourages our faith in God to be strengthened. Conversely, faith is often tested in those long and painful seasons of life, when patient endurance is called upon as we trustingly wait for the Lord to act, submissively waiting on the Lord’s promises to be fulfilled in prayer, and praise, and thanksgiving. We need to confidently wait for the Lord to act on our behalf, knowing that His promises are ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ in Christ Jesus, and we need to faithfully wait on the Lord with psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, making music to the Lord in our hearts with thanksgiving and praise. When we are abiding in Christ, our inner heart is empowered, and our courage is enlarged. When we are resting in His love, our soul is strengthened by the Spirit of the Lord, for His strength is made perfect in our restful weakness. When we take God at His Word and trust Him unquestioningly, despite our inner fleshly nature and outer distressing circumstances which scream at us to do something, we will be enabled, from within, to wait on the LORD and be of good courage. For we have been promised that He shall strengthen our heart. “Wait for the LORD,” is David’s final conclusion of the matter. If God is our strength and our salvation, we are to wait for Him. We are not to be fainthearted, we are to be strong. We are to let our heart take courage, and we are to wait expectantly for Him. In his epistle to the Ephesians, Paul tells us how we can be strong and how our hearts can take courage; we are to put on the armor of God and rest our entire hope in Him and Him alone. We are not to rely on our own strength or powers when encompassed by problems and pain. We are not to take things into our own hands or rely on worldly strategies, nor are we to put our hope in a bank balance or other passing fancies. We are to be strong in the LORD, to draw our strength from Him. We are to be enabled by His mighty power, and we are to remember that His power is perfected by our weakness because it is rooted and grounded in Christ’s victory on the Cross. When surrounded by enemies or forsaken by friends, we are to look to Christ. We are to walk in His way, trust Him in all things, and in everything by prayer, praise, and supplication, make our requests known to God. And we are to wait for His perfect time. We are to wait for the Lord. We are to be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. We are to take courage in our hearts and look to JESUS, and we will not only discover Him to be the strength of our life, but the Light to our Christian walk, and salvation for our soul.
Spiritual Steve 