The Bible Recap reading plan in the YouVersion app featured a video overview of the Book of Numbers this morning. It showed how the tabernacle was set in the precise middle of the camp with the twelve tribes camping around it in the form of a cross. The visible presence of God was at the center of it all.

This psalm has seven verses. A note appears before the numbered verses telling us this is a song David wrote when the tattletale Ziphites told King Saul David was hiding among them. Verses 1-3 tells us what David prayed about that:

      1 Save me, O God, by your name; 
         vindicate me by your might. 
      2 Hear my prayer, O God; 
         listen to the words of my mouth. 

      3 Arrogant foes are attacking me; 
         ruthless people are trying to kill me— 
         people without regard for God.

Verses 5-7 tell us what David considered the logical outcome of his appeal to God:

      5 Let evil recoil on those who slander me; 
         in your faithfulness destroy them. 

      6 I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you; 
         I will praise your name, LORD, for it is good. 
      7 You have delivered me from all my troubles, 
         and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes.

Right in the center of this seven-verse song is verse 4:

      Surely God is my help; 
         the Lord is the one who sustains me.

The New Living Translation says it this way:

But God is my helper.
The Lord keeps me alive!

• David’s confidence was not in his ability to save himself.
• David’s confidence was not in the ability of his friends.
• David’s confidence was in God. 

If God is your helper, there is nothing you will need to do that you will lack the ability to do. 

It does not matter who wants you dead if God wants you alive. 

This is a good, solid truth for us today. No matter what lies before us, no matter what pursues us, if God is for us, who can be against us?

The Apostle Paul expands this idea in Romans 8:31-39. 

Take a good look at your day. Run a SWOT analysis over what you can see from this perspective.

• What are your strengths?
• What are your weaknesses?
• What are your opportunities?
• What are your threats?

Ask God to help you with each one of these. Remember, his foolishness is wiser than your wisdom and his weakness is stronger than your strength (1 Corinthians 1:25). 

Take a stand with David and Paul and remember how God is your helper and how he gives you the sustainability to face, endure, and overcome whatever is ahead. You might not want to laugh in the face of danger, but you can sing David’s song.

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