Psalm 18 (part 2): just stick close to God
I want to write again about Psalm 18 because the ending verses strike me as very important. I’m not going to reproduce all of them here, but I invite you to read the whole psalm, and to focus in particular on verses 43-50. I find them important because of this: “He saves his king time after time, displays his faithful love for his anointed, for David and his heirs for ever.”
It’s not that David was extra special. It’s not that he deserved to be king. None of us deserve anything, if we’re to come right down to the heart of it. All that David’s to be lauded for is that he stuck close to God all his life. That’s it. He made plenty of mistakes, some of them glaring, but he didn’t let go of God. That made all the difference! For that, he was placed “at the head of the nations”, and all of the blessings described in this psalm and other psalms were heaped upon him. And this underscores the following: what God wills, will happen! It sounds simple, you probably knew it already, but really, there’s no escape from this. If anything is to be gotten out of this psalm, it is this. I don’t care what the circumstances are, I don’t care what the situation looks like, I don’t care who falls around you, who’s attacking who and who seems to be winning, God’s will prevails, all the time!
What should we do? Stick close to God! How do we realize our full potential? Stick close to God! How do we make sure we get through life and are assured of salvation? Stick close to God! Just don’t let go, no matter what happens! Grab hold of God, and don’t let go!
