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When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise\u2014in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? (Psalm 56:3-4)

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This psalm follows similar threads to the last few.\xa0 Enemies pursue constantly.\xa0 Prideful, arrogant people twist words, conspire, and lurk all to undercut the life of the of the psalmist.\xa0 There are many reasons to fear, as pastor Michael talked about yesterday.

We can fear the big things like the culture shifts and the rising prices that we feel.\xa0 We can fear personal things like relationships that fracture, challenges at work, antagonistic people, a hard decision, or the loss of something or someone that we love. Fear swirls all around us, or at least it can.

But psalm 56 largely centers around trust.\xa0 When fear rises up, the psalm sees it as an invitation and reminder to turn to God and renew our trust in him.\xa0 \u201cWhen I am afraid, I put my trust in you.\u201d\xa0 A simple, but powerful refrain.\xa0

Why might we trust in God?\xa0 Well, because God is bigger than our fear.\xa0 Human enemies are not God.\xa0 Human problems are not bigger than God.\xa0 God is the God of deliverance and salvation, and because he\u2019s God, he is able to deliver us from and hold on to us through any danger, hardship, or loss that we might fear.\xa0

This is a refrain that echoes through the Bible.\xa0 Jesus takes it up, as does Paul when he writes in Romans 8: \u201cif God is for us, who can be against us?\u201d\xa0 Indeed, he goes on to say that nothing \u201cwill be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.\u201d

Many of the things we fear in this life are things that threaten our lives or ways of living in some way, or that threaten the lives of those we love.\xa0 All the examples I\u2019ve given are of that sort.\xa0 Fear appears where the loss of some goodness of life is threatened, which can be from as seemingly neutral a thing as a simple change in life.\xa0 Change also involves loss, and therefore can be a context for fear.\xa0

But against those fears, the psalmist who has practiced a trust in God proclaims by the psalm\u2019s end: \u201cYou have delivered me from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.\u201d

Our trust in Jesus rests on an even stronger word.\xa0 The Apostle John reminds us that God\u2019s perfect love shown to us in Christ drives out our fear, and Jesus himself in John\u2019s gospel says \u201cI am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.\u201d\xa0 It\u2019s almost a direct quote from the final line of this psalm.\xa0 For those who walk with trust in Jesus against all life\u2019s fears, the promise is that we will indeed walk in the light of life.\xa0

For those who might be interested in listening to it, the Australian band, the Sons of Korah, have an excellent setting of psalm 56, which you can search on the internet or find on Spotify, here.

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