TRUSTING IN THE LORD

“Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in Him, because we trust in His holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in You.”
Psalm 33:20-22 (ESV)

Just about every day we are faced with uneasiness and uncertainty about our different life circumstances. Some of these are small and some just seem unbearable. What an incredibly comforting thought that our God “is our help and our shield” (v20). As believers, God truly wants His children to rely on Him and trust completely in His wisdom.

We (thankfully) cannot change the authority of God as He is aware of our needs and also how best we can learn to trust Him more. We must also learn to wait on the Lord patiently. He is the one who fashioned our hearts (Isa. 29:15-16) and knows what is best for them. Because God has made us (Ps. 119:73), we can trust Him that what He gives us and when He gives it to us is good (Matt. 7:11). We no longer have to be like the character Pilgrim carrying a huge burden on our backs. We can trust the saving work of Jesus, “trust in His holy name”, the one who formed and knows our hearts (Ps.33:15).  Then we will be able to sing as Pilgrim did:

“Thus far did I come laden with my sin, nor could aught ease the grief that I was in, till I came hither. What a place is this! Must here be the beginning of my bliss? Must here the burden fall from off my back? Must here the strings that bound it to me, crack? Blessed cross! Blessed sepulcher! Blessed rather be the Man that there was put to shame for me.”

Putting our hope and trust in the providence of God and His saving work through Christ should cause us to reflect what the Psalmist says in verse one of this chapter, that we can “shout for joy in the Lord”!