Praise for His Deliverance

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says if Jesus can carry world governments on His shoulders, do you think He can handle your problem?

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: So when you’re watching the news, when you’re dealing with a rebellious family member, when you’re dealing with a crazy workplace or church situation—or whatever it is—just be reminded, “My shoulders aren’t big enough for that burden, but His are. I’m not strong enough to carry that, but He is!”

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Heaven Rules, for December 29, 2022. I’m Dannah Gresh.

When you feel overwhelmed, you need to anchor your soul to something—or shall I say Someone—solid! Nancy, we talked with Jewell at our recent True Womanconference, and she put it this way. 

Jewell: My anchor holds within the Lord. So if it wasn’t for God and His salvation that He’s given us through His Son, Jesus Christ, my boat would be flipped over! And so, I’m so grateful for having God as my Anchor.

Nancy: What a great way to express our dependence on the Lord! If it weren’t for Him, I’m sure all of our boats would be flipped over. Today as we open our Bibles to Psalm 28, we’re going to hear how King David fought against that “flipped over” feeling. 

But first I wanted to give you a quick update on how things are going with our year-end goal, here at Revive Our Hearts. As we looked at the current financial needs of the ministry and the opportunities for expanded outreach in the year ahead, we felt the Lord wanted us to exercise faith and trust Him to provide $3 million dollars during the month of December.

Now, I know that’s a big number, and I also know that these are economically down times. But here’s what else I know: we serve a big God! A significant portion of that over-all goal was provided by some friends of Revive Our Hearts who contributed to a matching challenge. The rest needs to come from friends like you.

Now, if you’ll head over to ReviveOurHearts.com, you can take a look at the progress bar and see the up-to-date total. But I can tell you, we’re getting close to meeting our December goal. So today would be a great time to make a donation and help us to get over the top and even surpass it. 

Now, ultimately our trust is not in the amount of donations we receive, but in Christ! He’s the Anchor who holds us fast. All we try to do is just to let you know about the need, and then we trust the Lord to move in the hearts of our listeners and provide exactly the amount He wants us to have.

And let me say, if you’ve already given toward that year-end need, thank you so much! Maybe you’ve been thinking about it and saying, “I want to be a part of helping them meet that goal,” then now would be a great time to do that! Thank you so much.

Dannah: Our web address is ReviveOurHearts.com, and the phone number is 1-800-569-5959. We hope to hear from you soon. Now, let’s listen as Nancy continues in the series “Perspective, Promises, and Prayers for a New Year.”

Nancy: Throughout this week we’re meditating on a not-real-familiar psalm in the Scripture, but a beautiful one, Psalm 28. Let me encourage you to be turning to that in your Bible as we get started here. 

Our goal through these days is to help us see the hand of God as we look back on the year we’ve just been through and for this psalm to give us hope and perspective for wherever we’re sitting today, whatever may be going on in our lives, and then as we face the unknowns of the year ahead.

So, Psalm 28, we’ve looked at verses 1–5 over the last couple of days. This is David’s prayer. We hear him pleading with God about some sort of desperate situation. I’m kind of glad that the Scripture doesn’t tell us exactly what it was, because then we might think, Well, this wouldn’t work for my situation, because I’m not in that situation. God knows what situation you’re in. He knew what situation David was in. His Word is always something that can help us know how to pray in our time of need. 

So let me read beginning in verse 1, Psalm 28. 

LORD, I call to you;
my rock, do not be deaf to me.
If you remain silent to me,
I will be like those going down to the Pit.
Listen to the sound of my pleading
when I cry to you for help,
when I lift up my hands
toward your holy sanctuary. (vv. 1–2)

And then in verses 3–5, it gets a little more specific, and David pleads with God to hold the wicked accountable for their evil deeds. We looked at this yesterday. 

Do not drag me away with the wicked,
with the evildoers,
who speak in friendly ways with their neighbors
while malice is in their hearts.
Repay them according to what they have done—
according to the evil of their deeds.
Repay them according to the work of their hands;
give them back what they deserve.
Because they do not consider
what the LORD has done
or the work of his hands,
he will tear them down and not rebuild them. (vv. 3–5)

That’s a word of warning, by the way. It should be to all the people in the universe. If we do not consider what God has done or the work of His hands, if we do not make room for God in our lives, if we don’t acknowledge His existence and His redeeming work, God will tear us down and not rebuild us. There’s judgment coming for those who do not consider the Lord.

So, in these first five verses we have deep groaning and lament. David is pouring out his heart to God in desperate prayer. And then beginning in the next verse, verse 6, there’s a dramatic change in the entire tone and feel of this psalm. We ended verse 5 with, “He will tear them down and not rebuild them.” That’s pretty serious, right?

Verse 6: “Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard the sound of my pleading.” Let me just stop there and look back up to verse 2 where David prayed, “Lord, listen to the sound of my pleading.” He prayed that in faith, and now in verse 6 it says, “He has heard the sound of my pleading.” And so, desperate praying turns to overflowing praise, so much so that some commentators on this psalm have thought that it could not have possibly been written by the same person, both halves, or that maybe it was in two different seasons of life. 

But I think we all understand that it is entirely possible for those whose lives are rooted in the character of God to experience both deep lament and full-throated praise and worship, sometimes just in the space of moments between. You can have lament and heaviness going on in your heart and at the same time you can have your hands lifted to the Lord—not being fake, just saying, “There is joy even in trials!”

I saw this beautifully illustrated last night in a lengthy text that I got from a friend. It’s too long to read, and there are some personal details that I wouldn’t share, but I’m going to tell you a little bit about what she said, but interspersing it with some actual quotes from her text.

She said she has faced, “dark, tumultuous storms” in her life. I’ve known her for a number of years and have walked with her through some of those storms. She has prayed for her husband for decades, and she said, “I have endured great sorrow over his addictions.”

She has also experienced heartache with children, different kinds of situations, some of it as a result of the father’s lifestyle, but others unrelated to that. And then she says, “I’ve known the shock of sudden death of family members.”

She said, “I waited for that last breath at the bedside of another family member battling cancer.” She just kind of cataloged some of the things that she has been through. More recently, she has experienced another huge loss, which was kind of the purpose of her text. 

But in the midst of all of this (it was a long text) she spoke of worship, of blessing the Lord, of hope, of joy. She said, “My Savior is as real as this grief! Just like He has been faithful a million times in my family’s life, He will again.”

Do you see the juxtaposition of heartache and lament and sorrow and living in this broken, sinful world with joy in the presence of Christ, the faithfulness of God? He is as real as this grief. “He’s been faithful a million times in my family’s life, [and hope and faith say] He will be [faithful] again.” 

Hope also looks to heaven, as she did. She just talked about heaven, because she’s just lost another family member—it was a tragic situation. So she talked about heaven, the place where there’s no more pain, no more sorrow, no more tears. So there’s this looking ahead. But even in the moment of lament, there can be great joy and praise. 

So David turns in verse 6 to praise, because God has heard and answered his plea. Again, referring to Charles Spurgeon (who I call “my friend, Charles Spurgeon”) on this passage. He said, “They who pray well will soon praise well.” And what we see is that God was listening to David’s prayer, even when it didn’t seem like He was.

So at the beginning, David said, “Listen to the sound of my pleading. Don’t remain silent to me! Don’t be deaf to me!” But now he says in verse 6, “He has heard the sound of my pleading.” It’s a reminder that our prayers are not in vain. God is listening!

I’m looking at my friend, Stephani, over here. Her family has been through some heartache—the loss of a young adult son, and just some painful things. I think of Stephani, she’s been in this ministry longer than I have. I’ve beeb here forty-three years in Life Action Ministries; she was here before I was.

We were young women together, now we’re older women together. She has had this burden—as have I—for God to send revival to our churches and to our nation. She hasn’t stopped praying, crying out to God. 

You couldn’t keep doing that for decades if you didn’t believe that there really is a God who is listening, who cares, and who eventually—in His time and in His way—will answer those prayers. Our prayers are not in vain!

So then we come to verse 7, which is a statement of faith born out of David’s experience and track record with God, faith in His promises. He says, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.”

So David is saying, “I believe You are who You say You are, even though this world is so messed up. My world is so messed up, there’s so much going on that’s problematic but,” he says, “the Lord is my strength and my shield. I trust in Him!”

Now, it’s not that there are no longer any evil doers—the ones he talked about in the first half of the psalm. There are! There still are evil doers, and always will be until Jesus comes and takes His rightful place as Ruler and King over heaven and earth.

But you sense here that David has turned those evil doers over to the Lord. He trusts God to do what is right. And so, David doesn’t have to live in perpetual turmoil over the wickedness in this world. He can be at peace and at rest.

I think that’s a good word for us who live in these very troubled days. You know, just watching the news some days can make your blood pressure go up! It’s like, “Stop! This is so wrong. No, that’s not true!” People are hyperventilating in their sinfulness, but then we start to hyperventilate in our reaction to their sinfulness!

David is surrounded by these evildoers, by these problems in the world. But in the midst of it all, there’s a trust: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped” (v. 7).

You see the word “heart” three times in this psalm. In verse 3 we saw an “evil heart.” Now in verse 7 we have a “trusting heart.” In the next verse—verse 8, which we’ll look at tomorrow—we see a “thankful heart.”

I often ask people who I know are in the throes of going through some things, going through some tough stuff, I say, “How’s your heart?” I’ll text a friend, “How’s your heart this morning?” I know they’re suffering some physical malady or something in their family: “How’s your heart?”

Our hearts can become evil hearts. In the midst of suffering, we can become reactionary, defensive, and resentful. We don’t want an evil heart! David said, “My heart trusts in Him.” I want a trusting heart because “the Lord is my strength and my shield,” even when wickedness is abounding around us.

We see in this passage that we have a powerful, saving God who is always acting on behalf of His people. The Lord is “my strength.” The Lord is my strength; I am weak, but He is strong. I’ve said this probably thousands of times throughout the course of my Christian life, and certainly over the twenty years through the course of this ministry: “I am weak, but He is strong.”

 

I am weak. I’m feeling this the night before a recording session. I’m feeling, “This is not coming together. I don’t know how this is going to happen! I am weak, but Lord, You are my strength. You are strong!”

We get into a family situation or a work situation or a situation in our neighborhood or trying to help someone who doesn’t really want help, or whatever. You think of the circumstances that trouble you, and then just remind yourself, “I am weak, but the Lord is my strength!”

He gives me strength in the battle. He is always acting powerfully on our behalf. The battle is not ours. 

I had a conversation with a woman this past week who is really struggling with some things in her work environment, and she just kind of unloaded and shared with me what’s going on. I’m not there. I’m not in control of any of this. I can’t fix any of this; I can’t change any of it. I did pray with her, which I know: God moves. And even as we were praying, God was moving in this situation, which we found out later. 

But the first thing I said to her after she poured out her heart about all the evildoing going on around her was, “Remember, you are not the Savior. It’s not up to you to fix this. It’s not up to you to change it. There’s only one Savior, and His name is Jesus, so this burden is not on your shoulders.”

Now, we do carry burdens, but we keep rolling those burdens on the Lord whose shoulders are big enough for the government of the world! My shoulders are not big enough to handle even my little world, much less the whole world.

So when you’re watching the news, when you’re dealing with a rebellious family member, when you’re dealing with a crazy workplace or church situation or whatever it is, just be reminded, “My shoulders aren’t big enough for that burden, but His are. I’m not strong enough to carry that, but He is. I’m not powerful enough to save the people or myself in this situation, but we have a Savior. I am not the Savior, He is. He is my strength.” 

And then David says, “The Lord is my shield. He defends me against the attacks of my enemies.” He protects; He preserves me in the battle.

Again, quoting Charles Spurgeon. He said, 

The Christian warrior, sheltered behind His God, is far more safe than the hero when covered with his shield of brass or triple steel. 

The Lord is my shield. So, David says, “He’s my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I helped” (v. 7). 

As you look back over this past year, how has the Lord been your strength when you were weak? How has He been your shield when you were in the middle of battle? How have you trusted in Him? How has He helped you? Think about that. Maybe take some time after this program to reflect on those questions.

Look back on this past year. “How has the Lord been my strength, how has He been my shield? How have I trusted in Him? How has He helped me?” Because as we remember what He has done, it helps us as we face this next year, to remember He will still be my strength and my shield for things that I have no idea are ahead. I will trust in Him, and He will help me!

You’re familiar with this old song; we sang it when I was a girl. We don’t sing it as much anymore. It was written out of a season of heartache where a mom with a little girl watched as her husband were vacationing on the beach and somebody was going under. 

The husband ran out into the water to try and save the drowning person (who he didn’t even know). He drowned in the process, and the mother and the little girl watched as it happened. Out of that unspeakable tragedy came this familiar song.

'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus
Just to take Him at His word;
Just to rest upon His promise;
Just to know, Thus saith the Lord. 

Sing that chorus with me, would you? 

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him,
How I've proved Him o'er and o'er,
Jesus, Jesus, Precious Jesus!
O for grace to trust Him more.

(“’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” by Louisa M. R. Stead)

I hope that’s your song as you look back on this year and as you look to the year ahead, because from start to finish, the Christian life is a life of faith. Do you need more help? Then ask God for greater faith. Call out to the Lord and trust in Him, for the psalmist says, “My heart trusts in Him and I am helped!”

He will help. He will come at His time and in His way, and in ways that you may not even realize that He’s helping at the moment. As you trust in Him, He will be your strength. He will be your shield. He will be your help!

And then David says, “Therefore my heart celebrates” (v. 7). Some of your translations say, “My heart leaps for joy!” or “My heart greatly rejoices!” That’s a strong word used here. “. . .and I give thanks to him with my song” (v. 7).

God is a great God! He is a strength. He is a shield. He is a helping God. He is a listening God. It’s fitting that we should greatly rejoice in Him. David says, “I was in great need! I cried out to the Lord, He heard me. I trusted in Him, He helped me!” And what’s next? “I will praise Him. My heart celebrates! I give thanks to Him with my song!”

Warren Wiersbe says in his commentary on this psalm, 

Lift up your hands to the Lord in supplication and in expectation, and soon you will lift up your hands in jubilation and celebration! 

We lift up our hands in prayer, longing. “Lord, we need You, we need You, we need You! Help, Lord! Please listen!” And then, in time, we lift up our hands in celebration and in jubilation.

But here’s the thing: how often do we forget to say, “Thank You”? We forget to give thanks. It’s easy to turn to Him when we’re in distress and then forget to thank Him for His answers. So, what prayers have you seen God answer this year? Think back to those.

Where have you seen God show Himself mighty on your behalf? Where have You seen Him come through when you had no clue how that was going to happen? Have you remembered to bless the Lord, to thank Him?

Psalm 103:1–4: 

My soul, bless the LORD,
and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
My soul, bless the LORD,
and do not forget all his benefits.
He forgives all your iniquity;
he heals all your diseases.
He redeems your life from the Pit; 

That’s what David prayed earlier in Psalm 28: “Don’t let me go down into the Pit! (v. 1).

. . . he crowns you with faithful love and compassion.

Don’t forget to celebrate; don’t forget to give thanks! David says, “I give thanks to him with my song” (Psalm 28:7). Christians should be singing people. We should be people who sing in church. Now, you see a lot of churches today, thankfully not all but many, where the only people really singing like they mean it are the people on the platform.

So that’s where a lot of the noise and the singing is coming from, but then you look around in some churches and you see . . . Now, sometimes it’s because we’re not familiar with the words, or sometimes it’s because it’s in a high pitch and we can’t sing it. 

I just think there’s more listening to music today. We’ve been conditioned to listen to others perform music. But there’s something very participatory about singing, as we see it in the Scripture. We’re not just talking about singing that makes you stir up good feelings; that’s sometimesmistaken for “worship” in some of our churches or our gatherings.

We as Christians have reason to sing! We have theology and redemption that gives us the heart, the essence of why we sing to the Lord. And you see this concept many times in Scripture. Let me just read a handful of these verses.

Exodus 15, beginning in verse 1, after the crossing of the Red Sea:

Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD. They said: 

I will sing to the LORD,
for [because, there’s a reason] he is highly exalted;
he has thrown the horse
and its rider into the sea.

Psalm 95, beginning in verse 1:

O come, let us sing unto the LORD;
let us make a joyful noise [that’s my kind of singing] to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise unto him with songs of praise!
For [because] the LORD is a great God,
and a great King above all gods. (vv. 1–3 ESV)

Psalm 98, verse 1: 

Sing a new song to the LORD,
for [because] he has performed wonders;

his right hand and holy arm
have won him [the] victory. 

Psalm 105, verse 2 (am I convincing you yet that we need to sing?): 

Sing to him, sing praise to him;
tell about all his wondrous works! 

We sing to remind ourselves and to remind others and to encourage one another about the wondrous works the Lord has done! The New Testament, Ephesians 5, verses 19–20: 

Speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks [see, singing and thanksgiving go hand-in-hand] always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

James 5:13: 

Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. [We saw that in the first half of Psalm 28, right?] Is anyone cheerful? [Has anyone been blessed, anyone been helped by God, their strength and their shield?] he should sing praises. 

Sing praises! And then in Revelation 15:3, in John’s vision where he saw the saints in heaven who had defeated the Beast, the ultimate evildoer, these saints in heaven . . . 

They sang the song of God’s servant Moses and the song of the Lamb. 

They were celebrating deliverance from Egypt and through the Red Sea, celebrating deliverance from sin and Satan, the ultimate deliverance. They sang thanksgiving! How great are the blessings of God in your life? Count them! Thank Him for them! Sing praise to Him.

Listen, when I talk to people or with myself (I do talk with myself some), when there are times of downheartedness or despair or discouragement, there are two things I’ve said for years and years to people. It sounds like this is just like a pat answer, but I want to tell you, it makes a huge difference! One is memorizing and reciting the Word of God. 

I’ve been meditating on this psalm all year long, and it’s exploding in my heart. It’s doing wonders in my heart. It’s cleansing and washing and renewing and giving me joy in hard places. So, reciting Scripture.

The other one is singing to the Lord. I remember one time early in Revive Our Hearts. It was hard going. I was drowning. I was out so far over my skis. I can remember just opening my hymnal to that familiar song “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”by Elisha A. Hoffman.

“What have I to dread, what have I to fear . . .?” I’m singing all three or four—whatever it is—stanzas through my tears. I’m sobbing. People probably wouldn’t have even recognized what the song was! But I’m singing these words until my heart was calmed, until my heart was settled. Singing to the Lord is something so powerful! “Sing to the Lord.”

So in this year ahead, we’re all going to face trials and tears and testings. What have we seen so far about that in Psalm 28? 

• Look up to heaven, cry out, “O Lord!” 
• Pray for evil to be overcome, starting with your own heart and then in our world. 
• Keep a constant eye out for the mercies of God. 
• Trust His promises, trust His character. “The Lord is my strength and my shield.” Trust Him to help you.
• Give thanks to Him. 
• And sing! 

I can’t help but just mention one more song, a Charles Wesley hymn, “Rejoice the Lord Is King!”

Rejoice, the Lord is King:
Your Lord and King adore!
Rejoice, give thanks and sing,
And triumph evermore. 

Lift up your heart,
Lift up your voice! (We could say, “Lift up your hands.”)
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice! 

Dannah: I hope Psalm 28 is coming alive to you in new ways! Nancy DeMoss Wogemuth will be right back to pray. I think rejoicing in the midst of severe difficulty is one of the purest kinds of worship. 

Look at Job, who experienced some catastrophic losses including the death of his children.What was his response? “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21 NKJV). Wow! I wish that I had that kind of reflexive default response, don’t you? O Lord, make it true in us!

Well, just a quick reminder that if you’d like to contact us with your year-end donation, we need to hear from you today, tomorrow, or Saturday. Your donation will be matched up to a total of $1.4 million, and we’ll need to surpass that amount in order to reach our December goal. So head over to ReviveOurHearts.com to make your donation, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow, Nancy will close out our year with a prayer and benediction from Psalm 28. Please be back for that on Revive Our Hearts. Here’s Nancy to close our time in prayer. 

Nancy: So Lord, as we are at this point in the hinge from one calendar year to another, it’s not that big a thing to You, I don’t think. But it is kind of to us because we take time to reflect. 

We thank You, Lord, that You have been our strength. You have been our shield. You have helped us each time we’ve trusted You. You’ve helped us in times when we weren’t even trusting You, and we didn’t even realize that You were helping us, but You have. And so we say, “Blessed be the Lord! Blessed be Your Name! You’re great; You’re good; You’re kind! We praise You; we want to sing songs of thanks to You.” 

As we face the year ahead with whatever it will bring, some people listening to this are in a hard and heavy place right now, so they need this right this minute. Some of us, we’re in an okay place right now, but a few days or weeks or months down the road, we’re going to need to remember this: “The Lord is my strength, my shield. I trust in Him. I’m helped, therefore my heart celebrates, and I give thanks to Him with my song!”

Could we just join in singing once more that chorus, 

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him!
How I've proved him o'er and o'er!

That’s looking at the past year, and then looking at the coming year: 

Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus,
O for grace to trust [You] more! 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is inspiring you to trust Him more for freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. 

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.

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