“You rescue the humble, but you humiliate the proud. You light a lamp for me. The Lord, my God, lights up my darkness. In your strength I can crush an army; with my God I can scale any wall.”
Psalm 18:27-29 NLT
Psalm 18:29 was written in military language, with a picture of armies of well armed soldiers, and the protective wall located around a city. David declares that through God’s strength he can succeed in any military conflict, but I wonder what was in his mind when he thought about a seemingly impregnable wall before him. In God, he wrote, no wall is a safe place for his adversaries within. However, and David was very much aware of this, his own strength was insufficient to succeed in battle.
We pilgrims will, most likely, not be involved in physical battles. We may not be conscripted or recruited into a battalion or other band of soldiers, armed and ready for conflict. But we will be fighting other kinds of battles, with health challenges, work difficulties, relational problems, money worries and so on. There will be some reading this today who are wondering where the strength to face the day can be found. They woke up this morning, and a feeling of dread flooded over them. A dark foreboding is perhaps rising up within and even a panic attack is making a start as there seems to be no way out from the wall of worries and anxieties just in front of them. Trapped and afraid, such people feel they have no way to turn and can think of no solution to their dire situation.
Well, there is good news for us pilgrims, because, like David, we know that, although our strength is insufficient, we have God’s resources at our disposal. And because of that, through our faith in Jesus, we have all the means we need to “scale any wall”. Jesus said, “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Jesus continues two verses later, “But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted!” Really? Paul “got it”, as we read in Ephesians 3:16, 20, “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. … Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think“.
But before we rush out and do something rash, we need to take a deep breath and prayerfully step back. The first step is that we must be aligned in accordance with God’s will. The battles we fight in this sad and bad world will always be before us, because that is what human life is all about. Sin and wickedness have destroyed God’s order, His perfect plans, and we are here deeply integrated with worldly life. But we have the power through God to survive the problems and challenges because he will resource us in two ways. Firstly, through our faith in Him we will be equipped to be an overcomer, able to face the problems. Secondly, God will often provide us with a solution to our problem, perhaps revealing a way out or remedy that we hadn’t considered, or even changing the circumstances or people involved, so that we are shown favour. But we mustn’t get ahead of God and assume that He is with us when we make decisions or take actions that ultimately might put us outside His will.
There is a story of a lady in Wales who lived in a village at the foot of a slag heap, leftover from coal mining activities. This heap of rubbish was a constant annoyance to her, and one day she read the verses in Mark 11:22-24, “Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours”. So one night the lady prayed that God would remove the slag heap and she then went to bed. In the morning she drew her curtains but the slag heap was still there. Her response was “I knew that prayer wouldn’t work”. This is not to say that God would not have removed that slag heap, but that perhaps God wanted to use the mountain of coal waste to help her faith and her fellow villagers, equally afflicted.
The Lord said to Joshua, and he is still saying it to us today, “This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). In God we are invincible and through God’s resources, properly engaged, we can achieve anything. But as Paul knew from his fleshly thorn, the outcomes to our prayers may not be totally what we think. Paul asked God on three occasions to remove whatever was troubling him, and “Each time [God] said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I [Paul] am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). So there we have it. If God wants us to climb the wall before us, and slay the giants within, He will resource us for the task. But we need to discern through faith that this is what God wants us to do; otherwise the enemies the other side of the wall, or even the wall itself, might fight back and overwhelm us.
Dear Father God. In You we have the strength to scale any wall. Please grant us the faith we need. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 