“When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise—in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” (Psalm 56:3-4 NIV)
Are you ever afraid?
I’m not just talking about the shock of adrenaline you get when you see a snake or a spider in a place you didn’t expect. Yes, there’s some fear there (for some people more than others), but I’m asking about something deeper.
Do you ever feel afraid down to the core of your soul about some threat to your physical, emotional, or spiritual well-being?
Maybe the doctor has some bad news for you, or you’re worried about what someone thinks of you, or you did something sinful and you’re afraid you’ll never be the same again.
If you’re human, you will be afraid from time to time. The psalmist David says it in Psalm 56:3. “When I am afraid.” Not “if” I am afraid. “When” I am afraid. That means it’s inevitable for the rest of us, too.
It’s not just during a pandemic that we’ll be afraid. That situation has come and it will go, but the things that make us afraid will persist in our lives, paralyzing us if we don’t know how to handle them.
David shows us what to do: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.”
Can we do that? It’s not something that happens automatically. It’s a choice we have to make. The fear wells up inside, and we have to say, “God, I trust you. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I trust you.”
When we do that, the fear goes away. We still don’t know the outcome of the situation, but we can face it without fear.
I think it’s interesting that David writes those thoughts in two ways: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you” and then “in God I trust and am not afraid.” Afraid, trust, not afraid.
We will have to repeat that cycle over and over as we go through all of the trials that come up in life. That’s okay. As long as we don’t get stuck in the “afraid” phase of the sequence, we’ll keep moving forward in faith.
If we use this time during the pandemic to practice, maybe it will be a little easier to live in trust instead of fear once life gets back to “normal.”
“When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise—in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” (Psalm 56:3-4 NIV)
What are you afraid of? How can focusing on God help you to choose to trust Him and not be afraid?