third and long

Have you ever walked through one of those haunted houses around halloween? I remember in high school it was always the best. We would head out at least once a weekend when the Niles haunted house would be open and shuffle our way through. All the guys doing their best to feign laughter and machismo but all the while we were nervous and every one of the slimy fingers that hit our face and the masks on levers hitting the chicken wire beside us made us jump. The entire time the nerves were on there last bit and there was no relief until the popcorn balls were being consumed at the snack stand.

I've never been the kind to worry much, but maybe that's because I've never really had a lot of hardship in my life. There was a time a couple of years ago when my job wasn't going well and I wasn't sure how things would end up. I prayed about it a lot and though I understood that God is sovereign and that nothing that I could do ever was out of his reach, my blood pressure was high and I really couldn't sleep at night. I worried about a lot of things during that time.

This psalm is so relevant to us in situations that are out of our control. Absalom was chasing him, his soldiers and friends were abandoning him and they were holding his adulterous sin with Bathsheba against him. If anyone's blood pressure should be through the roof it is David's, but he gets a good night's sleep. It says in verse five that he slept and then awakened refreshed. The key being in the end of the verse where God sustained him. How did he have that kind of an attitude and that kind of faith, especially when that kind of weight is hanging on his shoulders? Spurgeon states it this way.

David knew that even though he had failed in the past and that there was chaos all around him, God had absolutely heard his prayer, God was absolutely the one who held up his head and that salvation still belongs to God. He slept restfully that night in that knowledge. How many sleepless nights have we spent with far less coming down upon our shoulders. I think people would see our Jesus for who He is if we lived more with this understanding and faith. Spurgeon quotes Phillip Bennett Power when he puts it this way, " those who walk by sight and not by faith will think it reasonable enough that the Christian should be afraid; they themselves would be very low if they were in such a predicament. Weak believers are now ready to make excuses for us and we are only too ready to make them for ourselves; instead of rising above the weakness of the flesh, we take refuge under it, and use it as an excuse. But let us think prayerfully for a little while, and we shall see that it should not be thus with us. To trust only when appearances are favourable is to sail only with the wind and tide, to believe only when we can see. Oh! let us follow the example of the psalmist, and seek that reservedness of faith which will enable us to trust God, come what will, and to say as he said, 'I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.'"

The greatest people I know who are following Jesus as closely as I've seen live this way. Spurgeon says that if "by humble faith thou art enabled to see Jesus as thine by his own free gift of himself to thee, if this greatesr of all blessings be upon thee, rise up and sing...I will pray this as well and pray that I can sing this deep worship tune.