“O My God!” Psalm 3:7
“O My God!” Psalm 3:7
Today during my evening devotion, I read psalm 3, where David is fleeing from Absalom. I noticed in verse seven that he uses the phrase “O My God”, a commonly used phrase in our generation. This phrase is used by a lot of people, believers and non-believers and in different circumstances and scenarios, you simply just put a tune, contextualize and just go on with your life.
Besides that being taking God’s name in vain which is something that I have pondered on for some time when I hear people using this phrase, I have tried to cautiously not use the phrase because I do not know where taking the name of the Lord in vain starts and ends. But just knowing that even Israel shied away from calling God by his name because of how holy he is, and because of the command not “to take the name of the Lord your God in vain”, coming across the phrase here on psalm 3 in the new king James version made me stop and look back at the context where David used it. The story can be found in the book of 2 Samuel where Absalom wanted to finish off David.
In verses one and two of chapter 3, David cries unto the Lord that his enemies have increased and so he cries to the Lord for help, and the Lord heard him as we read in verse 4. After crying to the Lord, he lay down to sleep and the Lord sustained him. I just love the sequence of these verses, first David puts his situation on the table, and then he cries unto the Lord, the Lord hears him and sustains him, and he is not afraid anymore. This is a real classic and it is just so amazing, normally we are prone to just focus on our situation to a point where we lose sleep because we are in deep thoughts about whatever we are going through. When we are faced with various troubles, we do not consider it joy, we look for ways to pass the cup and we turn to arm of flesh solutions. We make escape plans or just be soaked on whatever we are going through.
It is not so with David, his trust and faith in the Lord does not allow him to lose sleep and that is a pattern that we ought to look into as children of God because worrying and stressing does not increase our days, Jesus made that very clear. However, there is peace that comes with knowing who holds the future and just relying on his sovereignty. There is something really striking and worth noting here, David has this trust and faith in God that gives him peace to rest from verses 3-6, but then it is also important to note that he does not just rest and say what will be will be, he calls on the name of the Lord, he prays and he knows what the Lord can do because he has seen him being with him even before, he has been saved and his salvation was indeed from the Lord. We see here that what made David rest was knowing that the Lord heard him, not that he answered him, or he rescued him, but that he heard him. I am reminded of something very important that as believers whenever we pray, the Lord hears us and we can rejoice in that and rest assured, because people make their own gods and idols that have ears but cannot hear that have eyes but cannot see. Who is like the Lord our God? What an assurance and grace! That our Lord hears us, his ear is not dull to hear us.
Sometimes we forget that we pass through storms and hardships by the grace of God that enables us, we forget that it is not our wisdom and strength nor our might, and we ought to thank God for all the victories because it is through him that we are not conquered even by sin. We are engaged in the fight daily, but the holy Spirit helps us to fight and conquer, we are faced by trial, temptation and the devils’ device. “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying about in the body the death of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:8-11) Therefore, we can cry “O my god” knowing that he is our help. David remembered in his hardship to run to the Lord and he found his rest. May we never forget our God in times of trouble!
