“I love you, O LORD, my strength.”
How long has it been since you thought of God as your
strength? I sometimes think of Him as
the one who gives me strength. Many
Christian athletes like to quote Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through
him who strengthens me.” (ESV) But I’m not sure that I’ve heard anyone say
recently, “God is my strength.”
While I might be splitting hairs here, there is a
difference between acknowledging God is
my strength and God strengthens
me. I think there is a reason we put, “I
can do all things…,” on posters, t-shirts, and wristbands, and we don’t put, “God
is my strength,” all over the place. We
want to be strong, to have some power to contribute that God enhances to put us
over the top, give us an edge, or let us win.
When we say, “God is my strength,” there is a sense of saying, “I don’t
have any strength of my own.”
I don’t like not having strength of my own. I want to be powerful, capable,
self-sufficient, and fairly autonomous.
I don’t want to need anyone. But
that’s not reality. We are dependent,
and we are supposed to be so. God has
designed us to depend on Him, and He will defend us. (Just as an aside: Philippians 4:13 has a lot more dependence in
its context than we allow it to have when we pull it out and use it for our
purposes of inspiring activity, so it is not at all at odds with what God says
in Psalm 18.)
And what a God we have to depend on to defend us! He is a rock, fortress, deliverer, shield and
stronghold. He saves us from our
enemies. Look at verse 6 to see how He
responds to our need. He hears our
prayer, and His reaction shakes the earth!
Verse 8 describes Him with smoke coming from His nostrils and flames
from His mouth! He is a terrible
enemy! This section is actually
comparing God to the gods of the people around Israel showing Him in a way that
surpasses them all. He rides upon the
storm, darkness swirls around him, yet He shines brightly in His glory. Lightning is his arrows.
The sea stands as the enemy of God in this psalm, and God
destroys it, lays it bare, and pulls His child from it in safety. It cannot resist Him. Such power!
Such might! Who can compare to
our God? None! No one!
No thing!
This is the God who is our strength. He rescues us because we are righteous,
although we are not so in and of ourselves.
It is, perhaps, more exact to say that He rescues us because of Jesus’
righteousness which He gave us through faith.
As Paul says, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses…, God made
alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14
by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.
This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Col 2:13-14 ESV) We were drowning in the sea of our sin, as
good as dead, and Jesus reached in and pulled us out, taking our sin upon Him
and, as He was nailed to the cross, He nailed our sin there. The best part is that Jesus then rose from
the dead, but He left the sin where it can no longer touch us.
This psalm is a picture of God who is mighty to
save. He is wild, terrible, and powerful
in His wrath, yet, as C.S. Lewis says of Aslan in the Lion the Witch and the
Wardrobe, he is good. He has saved us,
so we put our trust in Him.
I love you, O LORD,
my strength. Thank you for hearing my
prayer for Jesus’ sake and for saving me.
Please keep me by the work of the Holy Spirit and help me to trust you
in all circumstance. Be my
strength. Amen.
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