Let Your Heart Take Courage
After church on Sunday, Faye and I thanked God for all the prayers he answered as we gathered that morning — for the support we had while serving, for the meaningful, heart-level interactions we had with church family before and after, for the songs we sang out together, for the kind of life and death we saw in Philippians 1, for the way Jesus stood up out of the text for us and showed us his glory as our great Treasure, our Gain.
And then I woke up Monday morning, turned to the next chapter in my reading plan, and the Lord graciously gave me Psalm 27. It’s amazing, isn’t it, just how eerily similar the first verses of this psalm sound to Philippians 1:20–21?
“The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?”
Why would David ask questions like those?
Because he has real reasons to fear, real people who want to hunt him down and hurt him (not unlike the apostle Paul in prison). Evildoers assail him “to eat up his flesh” (verse 2). An army encamps against him (verse 3). War rises up against him (also verse 3).
“Yet I will be confident,” he says at the end of verse 3. He could have said, “Yes, and I will rejoice. For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance” (Philippians 1:19).
Just look what he says in the very next verse:
“One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple.”
Why do I have hope, even in horrible circumstances?
Because I’m going to see him.
Soon, David believed, he was going to get to gaze on the beauty of the Lord in his presence — no more evildoers, no more enemies, no more wars. Or, as he says in verse 13, “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” I can endure any amount of pain or hostility for now, because I know that if I’m faithful through this, if I keep trusting God to deliver me through this, I’ll get to see him. I want one thing in life — not freedom or comfort, not victory or vindication — in the end, I just want him. And David didn’t know all the details yet, but that “him” has a name and a face; it’s Jesus.
So, if you’re praying for some kind of deliverance now — for healing, for relief, for reconciliation, for whatever — I want to encourage you with the last verse in Psalm 27 (and you might think of a hurting friend to send this verse to today, because we live to help one another keep believing and enjoying Jesus):
“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
He will deliver you, and then you’ll get to gaze upon his beauty forever.