In the battle … blessed

Psalm 144

A psalm of David.

¹ Praise the Lord, who is my rock.
He trains my hands for war
and gives my fingers skill for battle.
² He is my loving ally and my fortress,
my tower of safety, my rescuer.
He is my shield, and I take refuge in him.
He makes the nations submit to me.

³ O Lord, what are human beings that you should notice them,
mere mortals that you should think about them?
⁴ For they are like a breath of air;
their days are like a passing shadow.

⁵ Open the heavens, Lord, and come down.
Touch the mountains so they billow smoke.
⁶ Hurl your lightning bolts and scatter your enemies!
Shoot your arrows and confuse them!
⁷ Reach down from heaven and rescue me;
rescue me from deep waters,
from the power of my enemies.
⁸ Their mouths are full of lies;
they swear to tell the truth, but they lie instead.

⁹ I will sing a new song to you, O God!
I will sing your praises with a ten-stringed harp.
¹⁰ For you grant victory to kings!
You rescued your servant David from the fatal sword.
¹¹ Save me!
Rescue me from the power of my enemies.
Their mouths are full of lies;
they swear to tell the truth, but they lie instead.

¹² May our sons flourish in their youth
like well-nurtured plants.
May our daughters be like graceful pillars,
carved to beautify a palace.
¹³ May our barns be filled
with crops of every kind.
May the flocks in our fields multiply by the thousands,
even tens of thousands,
¹⁴ and may our oxen be loaded down with produce.
May there be no enemy breaking through our walls,
no going into captivity,
no cries of alarm in our town squares.
¹⁵ Yes, joyful are those who live like this!
Joyful indeed are those whose God is the Lord.

“Praise be to the Lord my Rock who never lets war come near me and who doesn’t let me get involved in battles” … that is how many of us would prefer the first verse of this psalm to read! Of course, this is not the case, and we quickly come to see that as long as we are still living in this world we are in a battle (or a series of battles).

It’s good to regularly remind myself that I am in an unseen spiritual battle, because strangely enough, I seem to regularly forget this and get a little caught off guard by it.

But God offers us ongoing training in battle, as well as being our shield and refuge in the midst of it, and thankfully, He gives us ultimate victory!

I will get through this (and every future) battle I face, and I will grow a little stronger, as a result, ready to face the next one. He is training me for battle, and with each little victory I get stronger.

The last verse of this psalm sums it up well: “Blessed are the people of whom this is true; blessed are the people whose God is the Lord”.

Written by Shelley Witt