Word of Encouragement (01/04/2024)

For you are my lamp, O LORD, and my God lightens my darkness. ³⁰ For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall. ³¹ This God--his way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. (2 Sam. 22:29-31)

In the last part of this passage, David acknowledges three things about God. The first is that His way is perfect. This truth is easy to accept intellectually. Since God is perfect, His way, too, is perfect, of course! But this truth is not as easy to accept, especially when we are going through a trial we feel like we don’t need and at the worst time possible. We even get resentful toward God because we feel that we know better and our way makes more sense. But deep inside, we know that His ways are higher than our ways. We see things at the ground level, only what is right in front of us. But God sees from His throne on high; He sees all things—from all eternity past to all eternity future. We have come to see time and again—after we are done with all our fretting and confusion and doubting and anxiousness to our shame—that His way is indeed perfect when His goodwill is carried out in due time. Oh, how He deserves our confident trust and long obedience!

The second is that the word of the LORD proves true. This is so because it is the Word of God, who is perfect. We believe that the Word of God is inerrant(without error) and infallible (incapable of error). We may see the truth of His words immediately (when they agree with our common sense or understanding of ourselves and the world). But that may not be the case with many statements or claims of the Bible. Think about the promises contained in His Word—for example, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7). This may sound too good to be true. But we come to realize that God is faithful to His promises to answer our prayers—if not exactly what we want and when we want but with the things that are greater and better than what we ask or think (Eph. 3:20).

The last one is that He is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. Imagine God being our shield with His omnipotent power! If He is our shield, who can harm us? Can Satan with all his power and wicked schemes ever destroy us? Should all the nations march against us with all their military might, could they defeat us? Not even one strand of our hair will be damaged. Think about what God did for Daniel’s three friends who were thrown into the fiery furnace. If that is what God wants to do, that is how we will be protected.

Of course, we cannot help but think of Job and his unspeakable sufferings. Was God not a shield to him? To have God as our shield doesn’t mean that we will never get sick or injured or die. Even David, who praised God as his shield, died in the end. So then, at the most fundamental level, God’s protection is not necessarily against all physical harm; it is ultimately against apostasy. This is why God allows temporal afflictions in our lives, which facilitate our hearts to be weaned from this perishing world and directed toward our eternal home. God will protect us from temporal sufferings, too, when necessary to assure us of His care for us.

May David’s praise of God be ours! Let us pray to that end.