Recovering With the Lord
Psalms 94:17-19
17 Unless the Lord had been my help,
My soul would soon have settled in silence.
18 If I say, “My foot slips,”
Your mercy, O Lord, will hold me up.
19 In the multitude of my anxieties within me,
Your comforts delight my soul.
One of the many things I appreciate about Psalms is their transparency. Long before anyone heard of being genuine, the Psalms can often reveal what is going on in the heart of the authors. Our verses today are a great example.
Unless the Lord had been my help, my soul would soon have settled in silence. The idea of settling in silence carries with it there is no answer, no recourse. Nothing to say or do, but that is not the case because the Lord has been my help. Because the Lord is my help, I have something to say about my situation. Because the Lord has been my help, you have not heard the last of me. Because of His help, I am still in the fight.
The New Living Translation of verse eighteen conveys the thought well. “I cried out, I am slipping but your unfailing love O Lord, supported me.”We don’t have a lot of ice here in this part of Texas, but I remember experiencing ice back in my home state of North Carolina. One thing about slipping on ice is that there is not much recovery. If you slip, you are going down. I don’t think the author of this psalm was dealing with ice, but the feeling of slipping is very unsettling. The result of a slip can be harsh, but here the mercy, the unfailing love of the Lord, was there to hold. My thinking is that this is not the cry of one who is physically slipping, but one who may feel his emotions slipping and going down. Verse nineteen makes me think the state of the author is more emotional and internal, rather than a physical problem.
“In the multitude of my anxieties within me, your comforts delight my soul.” This seems to sum up the struggle of the author and his looking to the Lord for recovery. He needed the Lord’s help and the Lord’s mercy to come out of a negative situation. And in verse nineteen, he describes the internal battle and the Lord’s answer. Again, I like the expressiveness of the New Living Translation, “When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer.” This could have been the comforting help of the Holy Spirit. Or the comfort could have come from God’s Word. Psalm 119:49-50 “Remember the word to Your servant, upon which You have caused me to hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, For Your word has given me life.”
The author of this psalm is wise in that he is going to the Lord with his struggles. He has confidence that the Lord will help him, hold him, and cause his soul to be comforted. That’s a very healthy perspective of God. These were the words of a servant of God. We have the privilege of being His very own children.
Prayer
Lord, thank You for Your help, Your mercy, and Your care for my life. You do not cause my internal struggles, but You are there for me in the middle of them.