This verse is the direct declaration of the Psalmist, David, in regards to his death.  He is thinking about that time when he will awake in Heaven and behold the face of the Lord.  His certainty of that event is solidly fixed in his mind.  Earlier in Psalm 17, David had expressed his thoughts regarding wicked and ungodly men, whom he called men of the world.(verse 14)  When they would die, David knew that these men would have no hope of joy in eternal life.  He knew that they could have only their portion in this life.  After this observation, David declares, [But] as for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness.  David’s confidence speaks loudly from the pages of Scripture.  What a comfort to be able to share that confidence with him!  When we are saved, we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, it is our eternal possession, our portion, forever.  While our own righteousness could never have earned us eternal life, God’s gift of Christ’s righteousness was given to us at the moment of our salvation.  In, and because of His righteousness, we will be able to stand before the Lord in Glory.  Everyday we can have the knowledge that the moment the Christian dies, he shall awake "satisfied," beholding the Lord’s likeness.  We can know that we will be completely satisfied with the fulfillment of every promise that the Lord has ever given to us.  We should not wait until Glory to feel totally satisfied with the Lord.  He is the same yesterday and today as well as forever!  In this life we have already experienced so many of His promises.  Joy should fill our soul.  We can think ahead to the ultimate fulfillment, for when we stand before Him in Heaven every promise will be complete.  If you doubt the Lord in any area today, stop to remember this: God is always faithful and always true.  He will keep His promises to you, dear friend.  In our spirit we can claim this verse today, not just as a future promise, but as a present reality.  Moment by moment we can behold Him in our lives.  We can be daily satisfied with Jesus.  Today, as we go about our daily lives, let us be constantly reminded of the Lord and of the life of present righteousness that He desires for us.  Beyond the earthly, let us have spiritual eyes to behold Him in every aspect of our lives today.  Each morning when we awake it should be our soul’s attitude to be fully satisfied with the Lord.  If we had that attitude each day, our lives would have more meaning, our walk would be sweeter, and our joy more complete.

What a mighty verse!  David, the brave and decorated soldier is declaring for all to hear that the LORD is his every defense.  Several years ago I was given some very old Spanish Sunday School lessons.  As I translated them, I was overjoyed with the depth of knowledge that the writer had desired be passed on to children through those visualized lessons.  His goal had been to impart to the children the view of God that each of the prophets of the Bible had recorded.  The flannel graph showed David, the sweet singer and prophet of God, as a soldier.  Then there was a picture for each word in our verse that David had used to describe the Lord.  The pictures all showed an object or place David would have encountered as a soldier.  That children’s lesson vividly demonstrated that God was everything that David needed in his life as a soldier and would be everything we need in our lives today.  Many times when David was fleeing from his enemies he would hide in a mountain, or as the Hebrews called it, a rock.  He knew that the rock would be his protected hiding place.  Often the enemies went right on by, even as David was able to view them.  Jesus is called the Rock.  He is that firm foundation and place of security for us.  He is the Rock of our salvation.  Not only is He our place of refuge and hiding, but also that surety in which we can trust.  He is the strong secure Rock that no amount of time and trial can wear down.  When our life is founded upon the Rock, our spiritual house will stand, no matter what the storms of life bring.  God, Himself, is also our fortress, our protection against the enemy.  Throughout the life of David, he is shown building a fortress in newly conquered territory.  By the building, he was claiming that land as part of Israel’s defense.  The walls of the fortress would be secure and give protection to the soldiers and people he would place within it.  Not only was the fortress meant for protection but for a bastion of offense from which to launch an attack against enemies who might try to invade.  Sometimes, during times of trouble, we look only to the Lord for protection and safety and forget that often He would have us launch a spiritual offensive against those things that attempt to invade and destroy the territory God has already claimed in our lives.  Passive Christianity does not always slay the enemy or quench the fiery darts.  From the sturdy fortress, God will enable us to go forth and be "more than conquerors."  If an old temptation tries to sneak around and assault you, launch God’s offensive weapons from the fortress He has provided and chase the temptation away.  Don’t let it regain what your Captain, Jesus Christ, helped you gain.  When we are in distress, God is our deliverer.  He alone can take us out of trouble.  God’s promise of deliverance is found in Isaiah 46:4, ...I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.  The ultimate deliverance for the Christian is from sin and death.  In II Corinthians 1:10, Paul tells us that God, who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us.  David says that God is also his strength.  When we trust in our own strength, we will fail, but when we trust in the Lord and in His strength, we will find good success.  The wordage is very important in this verse.  Did you notice that the Lord’s strength became David’s strength: The LORD is...my strength.  What a glorious thought: God’s own strength is mine when I fully trust in Him!  He is my buckler, my encompassing shield of protection.  Each soldier girded on his buckler before he went out to battle.  He knew that he would need a protection from even the weapons he could not dodge.  Only God can provide us with protection from an unseen enemy.  God is the horn of my salvation.  In that spiritual analogy, the Lord is seen as the One who is the full strength behind our salvation.  We do not have to rely on our own merits, a church or a religious ceremony.  We can trust our salvation to the Lord.  The horn was the symbol of the strength and presence of God.  We can grab onto the horn of our salvation and know our future is secure.  He is our high tower, not only as a place of protection, but also where we can view life in perspective.  What a unique vantage point we have as Christians to view life through spiritual eyes!  All these things God was to David and is to us.  He does not just provide us with these things, He, personally is all in all to us.  Did you notice the description of the Lord right in the middle of the verse.  It is the central thought and the key to all the others: The LORD is...my God.  What a possession we have in Him!  Today as we act as soldiers of the Lord, in the service of the King, let us be like David and allow God to be everything to us.  Let us lay down our own weak defenses and pick up God’s mighty ones.  Let us walk in the power and might of the Lord!

Waters are many times used in the Scripture to stand for troubles of this world.  When we become overwhelmed by problems or the cares of this life, we need to visualize this verse in our minds.  We may feel the flood waters of trials coming up all around us and fear that we are at the point of drowning, but God is sending help from Heaven to us in our distress.  He is ready to draw us up out of the overwhelming flood, the tossing waves of the storm.  Our picture should show the Christian engulfed in the raging waters with his hand lifted up, and the strong and mighty hand of our Lord reaching down to securely rescue him from the waves and place him on the safety of the shore line.  In the New Testament when Peter started to walk to Jesus on the water, we have a dramatic example of this verse.  At first, Peter was full of enthusiasm and launched right out into the water, regardless of its depth or the power of the waves.  His confidence was in obeying the Lord’s command to come to Him on the water.  As he started to walk, he must have looked at the water under and all around him.  Surely, in Peter’s eyes, Jesus suddenly looked far away.  But, in truth, Jesus was still right there, exactly where He was when Peter had left the boat and entered the water.  What had changed was not the Lord’s position, Jesus did not sink in the waves nor remove Himself to the distant shore.  What had changed was Peter’s view of the situation.  In his mind, the waters were waiting and ready to engulf him.  He forgot that the mighty Creator of that water was waiting and ready to help him and, that, more quickly than the next wave could crest and break over Peter’s head.  The words used in Matthew chapter 14 to describe the rescue are very interesting: He cried, saying, Lord save me.  And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him.  It does not say that the Lord had to run across the waves or that Peter sank under the water while he awaited aid.  No, Jesus just stretched out his hand and He did it immediately.  He was in the place to save all along.  So it is with our lives.  Even before we are overwhelmed, God is ready and waiting to help us.  It is important to remember that Peter did cry out to the Lord in the midst of the distress.  I am certain that the Lord would have rescued him even if he had not called out for help, but God recorded every word of the encounter for our edification.  Peter did not forget who was the only One that could rescue him.  He was totally aware of the Lord and His presence.  The waters did not completely overwhelm him.  There is no trial or flood of problems that is so great that we should lose sight of the closeness of the Lord and forget that we can cry out to Him for help.  Whatever your problems are today, let God take you and draw you out of many waters.  Don’t sink in despair, let God lift you up.

So many verses in the Psalms refer to deliverance, and it is little wonder that they do.  David’s life was full of danger and flight from enemies.  God used those instances to teach him that in every situation God could deliver His own.  Through David’s songs of praise to God, we can learn the same truth.  God, and God alone, is the One who will deliver us.  When the problems of life crowd around us and seem to squeeze us into a tight corner, God can bring us forth...into a large place.  It would be like a poor, frightened prisoner, who had been locked into a small dark room, suddenly released and taken to relax in a beautiful sunlit meadow land with wide skies, towering mountains and flowing streams.  In God’s deliverance there is real freedom.  We might try to walk away from our problems, but they will always return to haunt us.  We might try to figure them out on our own, but so many times we fail to see the answers.  But with God all things are possible.  When we allow Him to deliver, He will always bring us forth into a life of fuller beauty and peace.  As we allow Him to take more and more control in our lives, He allows us the greater freedom to walk in His pleasant places.  In Acts chapter 5, the Saducees laid their hands on the apostles, and put them in the common prison.  They thought to silence them and put a stop to the success of the preaching that was changing the lives of thousands.  But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth... (verse 19)  No common prison could hold these men of God.  The angel brought them out into a larger place of ministry.  No Christian should allow himself to be locked into a common prison of fear, distrust, timidity or sinful habits.  God wants to bring us out into places of enlarged service.  We can only have that blessing as we step through the open door of deliverance from that which would enslave us.  Only a foolish person would stay in the dark dank cell when they could have God’s glorious freedom.  He delights in you as His precious child.  Delight in Him as your loving Father today.

A little children’s song begins: "My heart was dark with sin, until the Savior came in."  What a true picture. Jesus, the Light of the world, came into our lives at the moment of salvation and cast His marvelous, powerful glow over every part of our heart.  Where there was darkness, now it is light.  Where we stumbled about in confusion, He now lights the path.  Where the horrible night monsters of fear, bitterness, hatred and guilt lurked, now we can have pleasant sunlit gardens of peace, joy, love and forgiveness.  What a lovely exchange!  When a child awakens in the middle of the night, he desires his parent to come to comfort him and dispel all his fears.  How many times do parents hear the plea, "Turn on the light," from that little frightened child?  The dark held the unknown for him, the dark was full of fear.  He knew the only way to chase away the shadows was for it to be illuminated with the light from above his bed.  I can remember being frightened of the dark as a child.  I was certain that many terrible things dwelt in the dark and that only the light would drive them away.  Every little noise in the dark became something to question and I was certain that I was never completely safe alone in my bed at night.  As a young Christian woman, married just a few months, I had to face this fear which I had never really handed over to the Lord.  My husband started to work the night shift and for all the hours of darkness I was alone in the midst of a large apartment complex.  I felt the old fear rising in my chest and knew that the fear of the dark was still with me.  Suddenly I realized that now, because I was a Christian, Jesus, the Light of the world, dwelt within me.  There was no place that I could go without Him, no hour of the night when He was not there.  His light was with me all the time.  It was shining forth in my heart with a warmth and reassurance that was stronger than the darkness that physically surrounded me.  In that one moment of realization, I was able to give my fear of the dark to God and to never suffer from it again.  In fact, in future years my husband would often scold me for being so fearless in a dark and strange place.  I did not know at the time when God released me from the fear of darkness, that many years later I would start to go physically blind.  I did not know the future but the wonderful caring Lord did.  What I had seen as a victory over a childhood fear of the dark, God meant for so much more.  He meant for my freedom to become a strength that would constantly remind me of God’s presence.  Even the darkness of blindness did not frighten me.  God had taken care of that years before.  He was there and His light was my light even in physical darkness.  With His light, He gave peace and the warmth of knowing that I was in His care.  He knew the way through my wilderness.  Not all darkness is found in a bedroom at night or in physical blindness.  When we are confused or fearful, we need to remember that God will lovingly light a candle in our darkness.  Sin always brings darkness, even into the sunlit pathway of a saved person.  That sin can overshadow and darken our life.  Only as we come to our Heavenly Father and ask for Him to cleanse us from that sin and put us back on the right pathway can we know the peace that a child feels when "Daddy turns on the light."  In our minds, God will illuminate so many wonderful ideas and joys that we never knew before.  He will light your mental candle.  As you walk through life today, never lose sight of the pathway that is well lit, even just for a few moments.  If you are tempted to stray, turn full face into His marvelous light.  Lord, today help each of us to walk as children of light.

There is a penetrating question that we need to ask ourselves when we read this famous verse: "Do I really believe it?"  Let’s read it again slowly.  As for God, His way is perfect.  If we really believe that God’s way is perfect, then it is the only perfect way.  No plan or scheme of the world, no modern idea, no selfish desire is part of God’s way.  They are never perfect.  If we truly believe that, then we will always want to do things the Lord’s way.  That is no easy matter.  It does not mean we can do our own first impulse or follow our heart in a matter.  Our heart can be wrong, God can not.  To find His way involves work.  We must daily and consistently read His Word.  We must search for His answers, His methods, His desires.  The more we study, the more His Word becomes part of our lives.  We must submit daily to the Holy Spirit’s control.  Only then will God be able to work in and through us.  We must consciously choose to do His will, many times turning from our own ways.  As a Christian, these steps should be foremost in our lives.  After all, we would not want to drive on a rutted, winding, dangerous and half built road when we could be on God’s perfect highway.  There is another way that we could apply this part of the verse.  God’s way for me is perfect.  His plan for my life is perfect.  Every detail that He brings to pass, I can trust.  Bitterness, that great enemy of Christian victory, would certainly not be able to gain a stronghold if we really believed that God’s way is perfect even in tragedy, sickness and change.  Instead of fighting against the Lord when His way is not our way, we could still be marching in the Army Victorious, fully trusting the direction the Captain has chosen for our life.  Whether that march leads over valleys of trials, or rocky ways of difficulty, if we are following close behind the Captain, we can trust in His wise decisions for us.  The word of the LORD is tried.  God’s Word has been proven true and pure, time and time again.  Like precious gold, refined in a fire, it always comes forth shining.  It has been tried down through the ages in the lives of many believers.  They have found it to be true and so can we.  If you need encouragement we can read a book about a famous Christian of the past who found out, with all assurance, the tried and true character of God’s Word.  Why do we ever doubt the Word of the Lord?  Why do we ever get tricked or sidetracked to follow another way?  It has been found true for thousands of years, we can rely on it.  God’s methods have always worked, we can follow without fear.  For He is a buckler, an all encompassing shield of protection, to all those that trust in Him.  Trust in Him today with all of your life’s problems and opportunities.  Find His promises and His ways to be perfect and true.  Try His Word, apply it to a life situation today and discover with the trusting faithful, His faithfulness to you!

For thousands of years, the Jewish people have repeated the truth of Deuteronomy 6:4, Hear, 0 Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.  It should echo to us off all the mountains of the earth.  There is one God!  And He is the LORD!  I Timothy reaffirms: There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.(I Timothy 2:5)  As Christians, we should repeat it over and over: There is one God.  Repetition should firmly fix it in our minds and our commitment should be clear.  The world should not deceive us, idolatry should not entice us, worldly pleasures should not raise their heads to claim our adoration.  Other religions can not distract us, other doctrines can not confuse us!  There is one God, and we can know Him personally!  No one else can be our Rock, our total security.  Only The LORD can be that.  The two questions of our verse do not even necessitate a pause to think through an answer, the answer is so obvious to the believing heart.  God is God.  He is the only One we can turn to for all of our needs, spiritually, physically, and emotionally.  Let us be careful that we do not let any other thing, any other person, become as a God to us.  When that happens, we give that person or thing the time, adoration, and devotion that belongs only to God.  And nothing, not one thing or person, can ever be shown to be God, only the Lord Himself.  How very exciting to know that all His resources are there for our edification and help.  In their song of praise after the crossing of the Red Sea, Moses and the children of Israel sang: Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?  The answer to these questions must have been a responding, "No one is like unto the LORD!"  He is glorious in His perfect holiness, all else looks like dull steel compared to the shining silver of His glory.  He is to be praised, but are we praising Him in our lives today?  He has done great wonders, will we allow Him to do those wonders in and through us?  He is the same LORD today as at the crossing of the Red Sea.  He can work miracles in our lives if we will submit to Him and fully trust Him as the LORD of our lives.  The Israelites had what seemed to be an impassable barrier before them.  The enemy was behind them and the sea before them.  They seemed to have no place to turn.  Then Moses said, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD.(Exodus 14:13)  They had to believe at that moment that the Lord, He is God!  In our lives there are often times when it seems that impossible barriers stand before our path, we seem engulfed in difficulties with no way out.  If we truly and totally believe that the LORD He is God, in our personal lives, then we can confidently step out by faith into His full salvation, trusting totally in Him.  Did you ever wonder why the water was made to stand up in a wall on either side of the Israelites as they crossed over?  God could have totally removed the water from the area, but instead on either side towering above their heads stood the two walls of water.  The sound of the wind must have filled the passage way that they walked through.  The message was clear, without God the troubles would come crashing down.  The proof was there for all to see!  Only God could do this.  The thought should have been firmly implanted in those minds, The Lord HE IS GOD!  No matter what walls of difficulty surround you today, will you be willing to fully trust in the God of your salvation?  He alone is able to make a path through the sea of trouble.  What a wonderful God we have, what a blessed people we are.  Let us repeat this truth over in our hearts until our minds grasp the full significance of it: "Our God is the Lord and He is our Rock, we can fully trust in Him."

(I hope that you are enjoying these daily devotional verses.  As we get in the habit of turning to God’s Word each day, we should notice a deep and abiding peace through our waking hours.  As we apply the truths for each day, our Christian walk should become more and more exciting!)

I found this poem and thought it would be a blessing to add to the devotions this week, especially in view of our thoughts on Day 24 and the incident in the life of Peter as applied to our lives.  (also Day 28 and the crossing of the Red Sea.)  It was a blessing to me.

Step out on the waves

That would crush you!

Step out in the storm

That would hush you!

And you will find,

As you touch the crest

You feared so much,

And walk on its breast,

There was One walking there,

The whole night through,

Walking, watching,

Waiting - FOR YOU!

Author unknown