Sometimes it is difficult to focus on your Bible reading. There might be things going on around you or in your head. You might just be tired. But the words just slide off your brain. It was like that for me the other day when reading Psalm 138. But something went click when I lingered over verse 8: 'The Lord will fulfil his purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endured forever - do not abandon the works of your hands.'
Here was a truth I could lock on to. It occurred to me that I often speak about God’s ‘good and loving purpose’. It’s a phrase that pops up continually in my preaching, praying and writing. And therefore it is in danger of becoming a platitude, something that easily and perhaps carelessly slips off the tongue. But if it is true that God cherishes a good and loving purpose for all His people then that in the end is all that matters.
That is not to say that it is always easy to live with that purpose as it is worked out in our lives. David acknowledges that. In verse 3 we see his need to be ‘bold and stout-hearted’. There is a need for inner strength to live in the purpose of God. David finds this strength in the assurance that God’s love endures forever and he will never be abandoned by God. The work He has begun in our lives will not cease until its completion.
David experienced this many times in his life. In 1 Samuel 30 we read of an incident in the days when David was on the run from King Saul. It was a particularly demanding crisis. David and his men were billeted in a town called Ziklag. In their absence an enemy tribe had overrun the town and taken captive all the women and children. In their distress David’s men were turning against him and speaking of stoning him. But in the midst of his inner turmoil ‘David found strength in the Lord his God.‘ (verse 6). What could have happened but that David remembered God’s promises and renewed his faith in His good and loving purpose.
So many thoughts flowed from Psalm 138: 8. From now on when I open my Bible I will be praying for that ‘click’ in my head that will warm my heart with the assurance of God’s good and loving purpose.
