My Heart Shall Rejoice

We’ve been looking at David crawling out of a hole. The ladder leading out is found in the two verse stanzas in Psalm 13. First, we find his desolation, then we find his prayer, and today we see his song.

“But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because He has dealt bountifully with me.”

I don’t think this was overnight…four “how longs” show that it was a while, David keeps praying, and God brings him out. You’ve heard, “a little dab will do you,” but that isn’t true with prayer or worship. Paul spoke of his friend wrestling in prayer for the church…we must wrestle, fight the good fight, and like Jacob, cling to God and trust Him to deliver us!

But we must also praise Him in the midst of the storms. Think of Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail…Luke says, “And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.” How would you respond? Luke tells us how they responded,

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.”

You are aware of the rest of the story…the rescue, the salvation, and the release, but notice they were singing in the prison not after they got out. I’ve always found it fascinating to watch the Israelites in the wilderness. They come to the Red Sea and Pharaoh is hot on their tail. What do they do? They were afraid and they cried out to the LORD, but they also complained.

God rescued them and the next chapter, Exodus 13, has the Song of Moses, but here is the problem it was the RIGHT SONG, but it was sung on the WRONG SIDE! After all they saw in Egypt the people should have begun to sing praises to God before He moved.

I know you know this, but the same is true of us…sing in the despair, sing in the heartache, sing in the sickness, and worship God. He won’t always get us out of prison, He won’t always heal us in the way we might want Him to, but He will get the glory and we will grow more and more like Him…and then we will find our lives like Paul’s when he praised God for the thorn!