Psalm 62: 1, 5 NLT
I wait quietly before God, for my victory comes from him. Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him.
I hope you are enjoying Psalm Mondays. I am. We are, in a practical way, getting to look particularly at David’s thought life and relationship with God. Today’s verse gives a great insight to David’s success. It also may point out a liability that we deal with in the modern society which David was not hampered by.
David learned to be still, quiet, even silent before God and this is a major part of his success. I often think he learned this very important skill in fields tending sheep. While his big brothers were off fighting in wars, David was stuck keeping watch over the sheep. It is pretty boring out in the field, by yourself at night. In those quiet hours, though, he learned to speak with God and more importantly, to listen. One will never hear God without quiet. Psalm 46: 10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God!” The psalm makes a good point. We will find it difficult, if not impossible, to know Yahweh as God unless we learn to seek Him in the silent times. To know God as God; to have Him show up as God in your life, you have to be able to communicate with Him. If you can hear Him, you can be led, taught, guided and instructed in your everyday life. When we cannot hear Him, He can’t lead us. We need peace and we need to quiet in order to hear God’s voice.
The difference between David’s time and ours is technology. There are so many distractions in our lives. We have televisions, movies, music, computers, etc. David had stars and moonlight; and silence. In that silence he learned to hear God.
We could all do with a little silence. Unlike David, we have to create quiet in our lives. If we really want to have God be God in our lives, we need to wait quietly and patiently before him. That may be a bit of a lost art but worthy of rediscovering. Maybe we need to get some sheep and go live out in the fields with them. If not that, perhaps just setting aside time where we control our internal and external environment. Slow down, quiet down and let God lead you to victory.