Sunday, January 31, 2016

Forsaking All, I Trust Him

Psalm 31

January 31

Is there someone you really trust? Trust is a precious gift, given out with discretion. Trust, hope, faith and belief are common themes throughout the Bible. It is God’s gold standard, His benchmark by which all other things should be measured against. Few psalms speak more about trust than Psalm 31 and several psalms following this one.
We should be cautious on giving our trust but the person we should be the most leery of is the person we see in the mirror. We don’t want to let down our guard around others but how often have we let our own selves down?

A better place to anchor our hope is not with others and not within and but above. Be sure, others will let you down and you will let your own self down. And in all honesty, there are times when we feel God has let us down.
So what do we do? Go back to trusting yourself or your health or your wealth? Anchor all of your faith in your loved ones or your philosophy or your political party? How’s that working for you? Even if that works for a while, eventually everything EXCEPT the Lord will fade away.  David saw that self-reliance was futile, his body was weakening; his soul was tiring; those around him were falling. “But as for me I trust in You O Lord.”

This Psalm begins with trusting God, uses two different Hebrew words four different times to convey trust (verses 1 and 19 convey "protection"; verses 6 and 14 emphasize "confidence"). And it ends with a close cousin to trust: hope. A good way to remember in whom we should trust is to spell out the word FAITH this way: Forsaking All, I Trust Him.