Psalms 71 is a reflective Psalm of David in his old age. He surveys his life to recall the many times God rescued him from the hand of his enemies. He makes a remarkable statement in verse 3: "Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort: thou hast given commandment to save me; for thou art my rock and my fortress." (KJV).
How did David learned to speak confidently of God's commandment to save him?
The word commandment means to lay charge of and it can mean appointed. The charge of deliverance is God's responsibility. David learned to rest in His power to save him. How and when He delivers is God's determination. Too often we have a faulty expectation of how we think God should deliver us. We get locked into a time table that quickly leads to frustration.
Beloved, the Lord must teach us to stop working out our own deliverance. This is not to say we become irresponsible and do whatever we please only to expect God to help us when things go wrong. I'm speaking about believers who are walking honestly before God and are not toying with sin and taking His word lightly. It's because they are walking in the light of His truth that opposition from Enemy calls for deliverance.
God has an appointed deliverance for us even when we don't fully realize our need for it! We read in 2 Samuel 8:14 that God preserved David wherever he went. So too will God command our deliverance as a testimony of His sustaining power to keep us.
I hear in the Spirit that God wants to break the attitude and mindset of those who feel abandoned or left to themselves to figure out how to deliver themselves. You may have wept and prayed for deliverance only to find yourself deeper in the pit of addiction. Some are overcome by worry and fear that has snaked around your throat blocking a cry for help. Your stomach is knots about tomorrow and the future seems bleak and dismal. You quote Scriptures and pray but the Enemy draws tighter circles around you. You can hear the demonic whispers: "You are going down!" "Your son will die of an overdose!" "God has left you in my hand!" (see verses 10-11).
In these moments we must not give way to a spirit that accuses God of not listening or coming up short in saving us from our distress. David learned to speak confidently of God's command to deliver Him because he learned to worship God at all times. Notice that throughout Psalm 71 David keeps coming back to this central truth of worship. In between the verses describing his pain and difficulty and of the enemy threatening him we read in verses 6, 8, 14, 22 and 23, that David purposed to worship Him.
Recently I discovered errors I made at work that could have substantial consequences. These mistakes were not deliberate but from a lack of understanding of the information given at the time. I took this to my manager to discuss what steps were needed to make the necessary corrections. I felt so low with fears swinging from losing my job to losing the confidence to do the work accurately when God spoke to my heart. What about thanking me for the mistake? It was not that God asked me to take lightly the error and all that it means but rather thank Him for the inner work He was doing as a result of the mistake. He was testing integrity and truthfulness instead of burying the mistake.
Worship will change our perspective from the natural to the supernatural. When we fix our gaze on Him everything in our heart changes (the circumstances may not) but trust and faith increase to believe God will see me through this difficulty. Why? He commands deliverance to those who have learned to worship Him rather than bow to a spirit of complaining.
When we call out Him, God utters the command to save. But are we willing to abandoned our self efforts to offer a sacrifice of praise until deliverance comes?
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