My Jesus it's Now

Psalm 18 opens with “I love you, O LORD, my strength.” The word used for love is not the normal word one finds in the Old Testament for love…it implies a love of a very tender sort…Luther translated verse one like this, “I dearly love Thee.” David was a man who walked with God and for all his faults he never failed to come back to God when he sinned.

There is much that can be said about that…many start well, like King Saul, but they fail to finish. Others, like the Thief on the Cross, waste their lives, but by God’s grace finish strongly. David was one who started early and finished strong and while he made many mistakes God could say, “He was a man after my own heart.”

David said, “I love you, O LORD.” Not I loved you, but I love you. That was the depth of their relationship. That’s the key—they had a relationship. I think David could identify with our hymn, “And He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own and the joy we share as we tarry there…none other has ever known.” It is my prayer that every one of us, when we come to the end of our lives, will be able to write a song that begins with these words, “I love you, O LORD…”

I love the line in that hymn, “if every I’ve loved you, my Jesus, it’s now.” David’s love grew through experienceand that experience is given to us in nine words—he said:

God is his strength,
his rock,
his fortress,
his deliverer,
his God,
his rock of refuge,
his shield,
the horn of his salvation,
and his stronghold.
When you go through David’s life you see these things…think about God as his strength—just a boy facing a giant and yet he trusts in God and God delivers Goliath into his hands.

God continues to give him strength against his enemies and King Saul tries to kill him—over and over again, he hid in caves and behind rocks and yet he knew it was God who was his foundation—it was God who was his stronghold. This is at the end of his life—look at the title, “To the LORD on the day when the LORD rescued him from the hand of all his enemies,” and there were many—Saul, the surrounding nations, his son, and others, but God delivered him. If we could train ourselves to look back and see all that God has done—our love would grow just as David’s did.