“He brought me out to a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me."
Psalm 18:19
Last night and this morning (including right now) I feel the thoughts in my head telling me that "I can't breathe." Am I breathing? Yes, of course, but the words are an expression of this inner tightness that makes breathing feel most necessary and less of a passive action. Breathing is necessary for life, without breathing you will die. So, in a sense it feels as if fear of death is around me. Mental uneasiness, whether stress, anxiety, or worry are all brought out by a deep sense of one's fear of death. Otherwise why feel uneasy if all will be well and life will be sustained? And not just life, but a fulfilled and satisfied life? Because that's not what I believe when I'm feeling this way. "I cannot breathe" because I cannot believe that all will be well in this moment, and how can I when there are so many things troubling me?
Then the psalmist reminds me that it is God who brings us to our shipwrecks and God who brings us into wide open spaces to breathe. God brings us here or there out of His delight. So either God is cruel for making me claustrophobic or He is loving by making me think this through to reach His delight. Which will I put my faith and trust in?
"God — His way is perfect; the word of the Lord is pure. He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him."
Psalm 18:30
His way is perfect, and my way is, well, my way. The way of Jamie. You need not ask more than myself or a handful of my closest friends about "the way of Jamie" before you find out about my imperfections. My way is based on immediate gratifications, temporary circumstances, and 28 years of living. God's way is based on joy that will last for the life that outlives time, eternal circumstances, and infinity years of living. Sigh. My imperfections are showing already. But the word of the Lord, or the written words in the bible, are pure. Pure means they have no other intention or purpose but to be perfect. They must be perfect in order to be a shield. The shield I run to when the shipwreck happens, when I find myself thinking "I can't breathe."
So it is not the shipwreck or even the words of God that I am thinking about, but God Himself and His delight in me. God the personal. God my personal God. I am at a shipwreck because I am in need of His delight in me, and I am in need of His delight in me because nothing in life satisfies my eternal soul besides an eternal love. My good God uses my willingness to exploit the disguises of my troubles, which first appeared as family, beauty, and achievement issues, and gives me insight into their true calling which was to show me that I have all of those in fullest joy when God delights in me. Suddenly I can breathe, and only because God delights in me.
"God — He clothes me with strength and makes my way perfect.”
To be clothed is most noticed when one has been naked and in bitter cold for a while. If you change clothes regularly, it is not as noticeable. However, if you stand in -26 degree cold icy winds that feel like jagged knives cutting at every inch of your face, neck, arms, hands, and legs then a sudden coat of warm wool will thaw you out and bring you to a better happy place. The psalmist here, however, isn't talking about getting to a happy place--he is writing about getting to a perfect place. So the analogy is that God is not only clothing you from the bitter cold, but He is transforming you while doing so in order that you be like Him and be above things like temperature. This is about being like God who is perfect in all His ways and in His being. We are led to the places of shipwreck only if it is leading us to the place of perfection--to God. A shipwreck for the child of God is never just a shipwreck. It always means transformation. We are being transformed from glory to glory, or in other words from gaining more and more delight by God. God is literally delighting in us more and more which means heaven is closer and closer. Heaven is going to be all about how much we love to have God delight in us, period. We love when people delight in us now, but how much more will we love the God who smoothed out and fashioned our faces together to look at us and beam with pleasure?
“You widen a place beneath me for my steps, and my ankles do not give way.”
Psalms 18:36
I particularly liked this verse because I have weak ankles and they usually give way on unstable ground. This is a dangerous fact, and it means I fall and trip easily which causes me a lot of pain and anxiety. God widens my path, but more importantly it is God who has the power to command my ankles, the bones and ligaments, to fasten more tightly to my movements so that I do not fall. In other words, God is able to keep me from falling if He wills, and I rest in that truth because it also reveals that if I do fall, if I break or can't breathe because of it, God will use that to mend me and take delight in my newfound renewal. God keeps no record of wrong for those He loves. God loves me, because I believe His word when He said so. Not because I feel loved or even because I know that I am loved, both of which sometimes are absent or have recklessly abandoned me, but above all of that it is because I believe I am loved.
“God — He gives me vengeance and subdues peoples under me.”
Psalms 18:47
What does it mean to be given vengeance by God as opposed to seeking revenge?
So someone hurts you badly, they just cut you up mentally, emotionally, or even physically in some way, and then instead of seeking revenge you have God give it to you. How does He GIVE you vengeance as opposed to you grabbing at it with short arms always out of reach? When someone hurts me I feel the pain of it and it sucks. Anger, bitterness, resentment all leave little poop stains on my face and God sees that and says "allow Me" as He wipes them off of me.
He knows what I go through when I am hurt by someone, and He allows people to hurt me to bring me more alert to the dirt on my face SO THAT He can lovingly wipe it off. It's not that the hurt caused it, but that something deeper in me was already against God as being everything I needed and such an evil needed to be brought to my attention. God gives me vengeance on the evil that caused me to resist life in the first place when someone He used brought it up to me. Should I be mad at the vessel (the person) or the evil in me? God frequently uses other people to show me the dirt in my heart in order to take deeper delight in me.
What does it mean to be given subdued people's under oneself by God versus lording over people?
The psalmist writes that God is the one who will subdue people under us. I found this verse a bit strange at first because my false humility started flaring up and thinking "I don't want people under me," but really I love the idea of that, because who doesn't love being on top? Maybe you don't, but according to this verse God considers it a good thing to have. So the question lies in the difference between God doing the subduing and me doing the subduing. What does is mean to get it rather than to try and make it happen? We live in a world that tells us we need to work for what we gain, but when you start to enter into dealings with God you soon find that you're not only way out of your league, but you don't even exist. You are an inanimate object next to God. What can an inanimate object do? Nothing. So it is strange, but God happens to love me, the inanimate object, and because He is God He breathes life into me and makes me do this or that for His pleasure while I simply reap the benefits of His breath in my lifeless self. This is to be made or breathed into God's delight. I then exist to bring Him delight, and as such He places my value contingent upon His delight. The further I am being made into His delight the higher my value goes, and at the rate of His delight I begin to see the delight of man as less and less desirable. His delight in me subdues the delight I once needed from people, and by this He gives me rise over them.
I can breathe a little more, now that the Word has brought me to a roomier place.
Jmegrey
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