PSALM 31

MY TIMES ARE IN GOD’S HANDS

PSALM 31:1 A psalm of David.

In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. 5 Into your hands I commit my spirit; redeem me, O LORD, the God of truth. 7 I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul. 9 Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief. 10 My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. 11 Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbours; I am a dread to my friends– those who see me on the street flee from me. 12 I am forgotten by them as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery. 14 But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” 15 My times are in your hands; 16 Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love.

New Year’s Eve is one of those few days in the year when just about everybody is thinking about the same thing. There’s something dramatic about watching the old year slip away by counting the hours left in it, then the minutes, down the seconds when the old year has passed into history, never to come again.

We seldom think much about time except when we’re running late. Time is a lot like a river and it’s carrying all of us downstream. Where is it taking us? What are we doing while we’re on the trip? A lot of people have trouble with time management, with putting first things first. Someone put it this way:

This is the age of the half-read page

and the quick hash and the mad dash

and the bright night with the nerves

tight the plane hop and the brief stop, the lamp tan in a short span,

the big shot and the good spot,

and the brain strain and the heart pain,

and the cat naps till the spring snaps

and the fun’s done and then comes taps.

If there is anything we truly need in this New Year, it is to get closer to God, to grow in the love of our Savior, and to carry out His will for our lives. That will carry us through no matter what the river of time may bring our way. Psalm 31 is almost entirely a prayer, but you can tell that it’s not the kind of prayer that one prays out loud or one that is prayed with folded hands. No, it appears to be the kind of prayer Paul had in mind when he told us to PRAY CONSTANTLY. It’s the kind of prayer that you pray while working or driving or when you’re under a lot of stress, as David was here.

Prayer and good Christian self-talk go a long way to having that Happy New Year that we have been wishing each other. Let me define my terms here: Christian self-talk is the fine art of handling the stress that comes your way by reacting to it in a Christian manner. David joins prayer and good self-talk when he tells God of his circumstances and lays it upon the Lord for help. Notice that he does not minimize his troubles; this is no whistling in the dark. He describes the trouble in all of its sorrowful details.

He said:

9 Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief. 10 My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. 11 Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbours; I am a dread to my friends– those who see me on the street flee from me.

(Then comes the good Christian self-talk, combined with prayer) But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” 15 My times are in your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me.

After all, it isn’t what happens to us that determines whether we will be sad, mad, or glad. No, it is what we tell ourselves about what happens to us that creates our emotional state. What we tell ourselves as Christians is largely shaped by how familiar we are with the Bible. After all, God’s word tells us that it is a lamp for our feet and our light for our path. Jesus himself used Ps. 31 for his comfort in the last thing he said on the cross: Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. He set the example for us to pray fervently and often and to tell ourselves the truth about any circumstance that 1998 may bring our way. The psalm goes on to say:

* 16 Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love. 17 Let me not be put to shame, O LORD 19 How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in you.21 Praise be to the LORD, for he showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city. 22 In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!” Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help. 24 Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD.

There may be times in this coming new year when you too will feel cut off from God’s sight. You may wonder if God has forgotten you. Oh, there’s good news for you here, my friend, good news that you hear at the end of many a worship service. The Lord make his face shine upon you. The Psalm says: Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your unfailing love.

When God’s face is shining upon His people, that means that he is SMILING upon them. What more could you ask from the New Year than that? Think of the grim-faced idols that you see on a totem pole and the frowns they present to those who worship these gods. We have a God who came here personally to smile upon us while He walked and talked with us. He endured the Father’s dread frown over our sins so that we could see His face smiling upon us forever. God was forsaken by God so that we would not have to dread the time when our lives will pass in review before Him.

That’s not all–not only do we have the goodness of God that we experience each day, but as we say today: there is more where that came from.. The Psalm says: How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in you. This is the God who is able to do so much more than we can ask or imagine. Trust him for your future, both your future on earth and your forever future. The Greyhound Bus Company used to have a slogan that every Christian should apply to the Lord God. They told us: leave the driving to us. The God who is smiling on us says: Leave the driving to me. You just trust me and I’ll get you where you need to go.

Jesus said: In this world, you will have trouble, but don’t be afraid, I have overcome the world.

Just as Jesus was identified with us in the defeat and humiliation of sin as He suffered for us, so, he says, we can be identified with him in his victory. This opens up some amazing possibilities. His victories I can make my own. If I adjust my life to his, if I relate intimately to him, when he overcomes I overcome. I actually live by the life and victories of Jesus. That doesn’t imply the absence of trouble, but the transformation of trouble into good when we place it into the hands of God.

Stanley Jones tells of a missionary couple who married rather late in life. They were so deeply in love with one another and shared each other’s experiences so completely that they sometimes had trouble distinguishing his experiences from hers. The husband was telling a guest at the breakfast table he of a dream he had had the night before. His wife broke in, why Frank, did you dream that dream or did I?

A Christian who thinks God’s thoughts can have the same experience. We can say to Jesus: Master, did you win that battle or did I? And we hear him gently answer: why, we both did, for my victories are your victories.

This doesn’t apply only to the major struggles of life, this has everyday written all over it. Jesus shared our lives right down to the nitty gritty of work and dirt under the fingernails.

That’s the kind of God we have to guide us through the New Year–One we can trust, One in whom we can have confidence for the future, no matter what the New Year may bring.

A French writer describes our frustrations with this life as coming from the fact that we “have one foot in the finite and the other in the infinite.” Translation: We live in two worlds, one bound by time with all of its limitations and the other eternal, unlimited, full of hope. “We are torn by two worlds,” he writes.

He goes on to say: Jesus had the ability to relate one with the other. The making of a plough had within it the remaking of the world, so he would make that plough well, and worthy of the world’s Redeemer. If you do a small thing as though it were a great thing, God will let you do the great thing as though it were a small thing. So day by day in commonplace Nazareth he wove with unlimited patience the seamless robe which he would wear before the world.

And while you’re at it, learn not to nurture your fears. It’s not for nothing that 81 different times, people are told in the Bible FEAR NOT. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have normal fear–the kind that makes you move out of danger. Someone said that normal fear makes you jump back on the curb when a car is coming. Abnormal fear is fear of life, an on-going almost undefinable dread. Abnormal fear, lingering fear, is lighted by the fires of Hell and the smoke of its torment ascends upwards forever. The only antidote is the perfect love of Jesus that casts out our fear.

This new year, face your fears with the help of another. One famous preacher says: Don’t settle down to live permanently with your fear. If you do, you will never be happy or effective.

Fears are not removed by saying, “Cut it out! Swallow your fear!” No, the steps to take begin with facing your fear realistically. Then replace fear with faith. Say to yourself again and again the words of tonight’s text: I trust in you, O Lord; I say you are my God; my times are in your hands.

The only known cure for fear, one Psychologist says, is faith. David said: I sought the Lord and he heard me; he delivered me from all my fears.

Deal with your fears with faith and then externalize them–in writing, or better yet, by verbalizing them with a trusted friend, a counselor or the Pastor.

And get to work for Jesus! There is no better way to use the time of this New Year. Here is a timely item that appeared in the Hawkinsville Dispatch News:

Take time to work–it is the price of success.

Take time to think–it is the source of power

Take time to read–it is the fountain of wisdom

Take time to worship–it is the highway to reverence

Take time to be friendly–it is the road to happiness

Take time to laugh–it helps to lift life’s load

Take time for God’s Word–it brings Christ near and

It washes the dust of earth from your eyes.

Take time for God–it is life’s only truly lasting

investment.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

(Author unknown)