I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy: for thou hast considered
my trouble; thou hast known my soul in adversities;
And hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy: thou hast set
my feet in a large room. Psa 31:7-8
my trouble; thou hast known my soul in adversities;
And hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy: thou hast set
my feet in a large room. Psa 31:7-8
Regardless of how many friends you may feel you have, no matter how prosperous, or beautiful you may be, the day will come when you will face adversities that you'll find you will have to face alone, and with God alone.
Even well meaning, and sincere relationships disappear after long sessions of storms and troubles, that they have no answers for, and they become weary of even being in your presence, because your still in the storm, and they desire to move on, and they will. You will face your troubles on your own, and if you have no relationship with the God of heaven, the world will become a barren wasteland. But for those who've found Him, and His reality, love, strength and ability to carry them-run to Him for every need, and every care. They've found in God, they have a refuge from every storm, and every trial.
These verses are invaluable, and in them you can begin to learn the power and strength that God provides for those who come to Him, and pour out their hearts to Him. They'll find as those in the Psalms have found, He is the answer to their every need, and, He answers prayer. As you seek Him in your storms, He will also give guidance on things you may need to change, or stop doing-this is for your good, and for your health, both physically, and spiritually. Obedience is better than sacrifice, it opens the door to greater understanding, and relationship with the Lord, and a door of bringing you into a realm of deeper relationship with Him, who created you. When you trust Him, you begin to realize why He created you, and what His hearts desire is for you-and it's always good.
In the Palms we learn how to dialogue with God, and be real, to put away pretense, and come to Him and pour our hearts out to Him, bringing our needs to Him as a Father. This is the way He desires a relationship with us, and when we make this a pattern of our lives, we find ourselves talking to Him in this fashion-all through the day, and in every time of need.
Walking through the day this way, every answered prayer will become fuel for your faith, and cause you to get to the place-you'll not want to do anything until you've gone to Him first for His guidance. God will become your best friend. Jesus says "I will never leave you, nor forsake you". When everyone else leaves, He stays.
We need to realize, the Lord corrects us to prosper us, and bring us into a right relationship with Him, not to destroy us. The lusts and sins of the flesh are all tools of the devil, to twist this truth, and deceive people. The conditions of the world today, clearly show this.
May the Lord enlarge your heart and spirit to glean some of His love, and draw you to desire a real and intimate relationship with Him-this is His desire for you.
Lorna Couillard
Even well meaning, and sincere relationships disappear after long sessions of storms and troubles, that they have no answers for, and they become weary of even being in your presence, because your still in the storm, and they desire to move on, and they will. You will face your troubles on your own, and if you have no relationship with the God of heaven, the world will become a barren wasteland. But for those who've found Him, and His reality, love, strength and ability to carry them-run to Him for every need, and every care. They've found in God, they have a refuge from every storm, and every trial.
These verses are invaluable, and in them you can begin to learn the power and strength that God provides for those who come to Him, and pour out their hearts to Him. They'll find as those in the Psalms have found, He is the answer to their every need, and, He answers prayer. As you seek Him in your storms, He will also give guidance on things you may need to change, or stop doing-this is for your good, and for your health, both physically, and spiritually. Obedience is better than sacrifice, it opens the door to greater understanding, and relationship with the Lord, and a door of bringing you into a realm of deeper relationship with Him, who created you. When you trust Him, you begin to realize why He created you, and what His hearts desire is for you-and it's always good.
In the Palms we learn how to dialogue with God, and be real, to put away pretense, and come to Him and pour our hearts out to Him, bringing our needs to Him as a Father. This is the way He desires a relationship with us, and when we make this a pattern of our lives, we find ourselves talking to Him in this fashion-all through the day, and in every time of need.
Walking through the day this way, every answered prayer will become fuel for your faith, and cause you to get to the place-you'll not want to do anything until you've gone to Him first for His guidance. God will become your best friend. Jesus says "I will never leave you, nor forsake you". When everyone else leaves, He stays.
We need to realize, the Lord corrects us to prosper us, and bring us into a right relationship with Him, not to destroy us. The lusts and sins of the flesh are all tools of the devil, to twist this truth, and deceive people. The conditions of the world today, clearly show this.
May the Lord enlarge your heart and spirit to glean some of His love, and draw you to desire a real and intimate relationship with Him-this is His desire for you.
Lorna Couillard
Known in Adversities
One great comfort of assurance in this verse is that such knowledge is always very thorough. When someone has known us in adversities, then he has known us as we really are.
There is a sonnet by Blanco White, familiar to all the lovers of the beautiful, in which he develops the thought that but for the night, we should never know the stars. And so there is a very real sense in which we may say we never know a life till we have seen it in the darkness of adversity. When the sun is warm and all the leaves are green, you can scarcely see the cottage in the forest. But when the storm of winter sweeps the leaves away, then at last you see it as it is. It may be stronger than you ever thought, or it may be more battered and decayed, but always the winter shows it as it is.
Indeed, the revealing power of adversity strips the summer covering away. It shows us not in the setting of our circumstance, but as we are in naked reality. And therefore one who has known us in adversities, and been at our side in sorrow and calamity, knows us with an intimacy that probably nothing else can ever give. That is why the knowledge of a doctor is often more searching than that of any friend. That is why the knowledge of a wife often reaches to an unrivalled intimacy, for she has known her husband not only when all was well with him and when the sun was shining on his head, but when his heart was wary and his body sick and all his hopes seemed crumbled into dust.
Hidden Burdens
It was a great comfort to the psalmist also that the Lord had pierced through every disguise. That is why he uses the word soul: "Thou hast known my soul in adversities." To the Hebrew, more simply than to us, that word "soul" just meant the real self. There was nothing theological about it. It was a common word in common use. And what the psalmist deeply felt was this: the knowledge of God had pierced through all disguises and known him in the secret of his being.
There are few things more beautiful in life than the way in which men and women hide their sorrows. On the street and in the shops there is a quiet heroism as great as any on the battlefield. You may meet a person in frequent conversation, yet all the time and unknown to you, some sorrow may be lying at his heart. How often a mother, when she is worn and ill, struggles bravely to hide it from her family. How often a husband, deep in business difficulties, struggles to keep it hidden from those at home. How often a minister, called from a scene of death which may mean for him the end of a friendship, has to go to a marriage and be happy there as if there were not a sorrow in the world. Talk of the disguises of hypocrisy! They are nothing to the disguises of the brave—those cheerful looks, that quiet and patient work, when the heart within is heavy as a stone. That Spartan youth who kept a smiling face while the fox was gnawing away at him has his fellows in every community.
But Thou hast known my soul in adversity. That was the joy and comfort of the psalmist. There was one eye that pierced through all concealment, and that was the eye of an all-pitying God. Others had known his outward behavior for in trials there are many eyes upon us. Others had heard his words and seen his actions and wondered at the courage in his bearing. But only God had read the secret story and seen how utterly desolate he was and known how often, in spite of all appearances, he had been plunged into profound despair.
There is a point where human knowledge ceases and beyond which human sympathy is powerless. It pierces deep if it is genuine, but there are depths to which it cannot pierce. And it was just there, in the region of his soul, that the psalmist felt that there was One who knew him and would never leave him nor forsake him. He felt it in the sustainment he received. He felt it in the strength that was bestowed upon him. He felt it in the peace that rested on him, a peace such as the world could never give. And so when the sun shone on him again, as sooner or later it does on all of us, he took his pen and wrote in gratitude, "Thou hast known my soul in adversities."
The Condescension of God's Love
There was one other comfort for the psalmist at which our text hints unobscurely. He had been awakened through the knowledge that he speaks of to the infinite condescension of God's love.
A well-known German religious writer who has brought comfort to multitudes of mourners tells us how once he had a visit from a friend who was in great distress. This friend had once been a very wealthy man, and now he had fallen upon evil days, and that very morning one of his old companions had passed him without recognition on the street. Then Gotthold, for such was the writer's name, took him by the hand and, pointing upward, said, "Thou hast known my soul in adversities."
It is one of the sayings of the moralist that the world courts prosperity and shuns adversity. There are rats in every circle of society who all hasten to leave the sinking ship. But what the psalmist had awakened to was this: the eternal God, who was his refuge, had known him and acknowledged him and talked with him when his fortunes were at their very blackest. Nothing but love could explain the condescension. He had found in God a friend who was unfailing. "If I ascend into heaven thou art there; if I make my bed in hell thou art there." So was the world made ready for the Savior who, when other helpers fail and comforts flee, never deserts us, never is ashamed of us, never leaves us to face the worst alone.
There is a sonnet by Blanco White, familiar to all the lovers of the beautiful, in which he develops the thought that but for the night, we should never know the stars. And so there is a very real sense in which we may say we never know a life till we have seen it in the darkness of adversity. When the sun is warm and all the leaves are green, you can scarcely see the cottage in the forest. But when the storm of winter sweeps the leaves away, then at last you see it as it is. It may be stronger than you ever thought, or it may be more battered and decayed, but always the winter shows it as it is.
Indeed, the revealing power of adversity strips the summer covering away. It shows us not in the setting of our circumstance, but as we are in naked reality. And therefore one who has known us in adversities, and been at our side in sorrow and calamity, knows us with an intimacy that probably nothing else can ever give. That is why the knowledge of a doctor is often more searching than that of any friend. That is why the knowledge of a wife often reaches to an unrivalled intimacy, for she has known her husband not only when all was well with him and when the sun was shining on his head, but when his heart was wary and his body sick and all his hopes seemed crumbled into dust.
Hidden Burdens
It was a great comfort to the psalmist also that the Lord had pierced through every disguise. That is why he uses the word soul: "Thou hast known my soul in adversities." To the Hebrew, more simply than to us, that word "soul" just meant the real self. There was nothing theological about it. It was a common word in common use. And what the psalmist deeply felt was this: the knowledge of God had pierced through all disguises and known him in the secret of his being.
There are few things more beautiful in life than the way in which men and women hide their sorrows. On the street and in the shops there is a quiet heroism as great as any on the battlefield. You may meet a person in frequent conversation, yet all the time and unknown to you, some sorrow may be lying at his heart. How often a mother, when she is worn and ill, struggles bravely to hide it from her family. How often a husband, deep in business difficulties, struggles to keep it hidden from those at home. How often a minister, called from a scene of death which may mean for him the end of a friendship, has to go to a marriage and be happy there as if there were not a sorrow in the world. Talk of the disguises of hypocrisy! They are nothing to the disguises of the brave—those cheerful looks, that quiet and patient work, when the heart within is heavy as a stone. That Spartan youth who kept a smiling face while the fox was gnawing away at him has his fellows in every community.
But Thou hast known my soul in adversity. That was the joy and comfort of the psalmist. There was one eye that pierced through all concealment, and that was the eye of an all-pitying God. Others had known his outward behavior for in trials there are many eyes upon us. Others had heard his words and seen his actions and wondered at the courage in his bearing. But only God had read the secret story and seen how utterly desolate he was and known how often, in spite of all appearances, he had been plunged into profound despair.
There is a point where human knowledge ceases and beyond which human sympathy is powerless. It pierces deep if it is genuine, but there are depths to which it cannot pierce. And it was just there, in the region of his soul, that the psalmist felt that there was One who knew him and would never leave him nor forsake him. He felt it in the sustainment he received. He felt it in the strength that was bestowed upon him. He felt it in the peace that rested on him, a peace such as the world could never give. And so when the sun shone on him again, as sooner or later it does on all of us, he took his pen and wrote in gratitude, "Thou hast known my soul in adversities."
The Condescension of God's Love
There was one other comfort for the psalmist at which our text hints unobscurely. He had been awakened through the knowledge that he speaks of to the infinite condescension of God's love.
A well-known German religious writer who has brought comfort to multitudes of mourners tells us how once he had a visit from a friend who was in great distress. This friend had once been a very wealthy man, and now he had fallen upon evil days, and that very morning one of his old companions had passed him without recognition on the street. Then Gotthold, for such was the writer's name, took him by the hand and, pointing upward, said, "Thou hast known my soul in adversities."
It is one of the sayings of the moralist that the world courts prosperity and shuns adversity. There are rats in every circle of society who all hasten to leave the sinking ship. But what the psalmist had awakened to was this: the eternal God, who was his refuge, had known him and acknowledged him and talked with him when his fortunes were at their very blackest. Nothing but love could explain the condescension. He had found in God a friend who was unfailing. "If I ascend into heaven thou art there; if I make my bed in hell thou art there." So was the world made ready for the Savior who, when other helpers fail and comforts flee, never deserts us, never is ashamed of us, never leaves us to face the worst alone.
My Feet Set in a Large Room
“And hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy.” To be shut up in one's hand is to be delivered over absolutely to his power; now, the believer is not in the hand of death or the devil, much less is he in the power of man. The enemy may get a temporary advantage over us, but we are like men in prison with the door open; God will not let us be shut up, he always provides a way of escape. “Thou hast set my feet in a large room.” Blessed be God for liberty: civil liberty is valuable, religious liberty is precious, spiritual liberty is priceless. In all troubles we may praise God if these are left. Many saints have had their greatest enlargements of soul when their affairs have been in the greatest straits. Their souls have been in a large room when their bodies have been lying in Bonner's coalhole, or in some other narrow dungeon. Grace has been equal to every emergency; and more than this, it has made the emergency an opportunity for displaying itself. (Charles Spurgeon-Treasury of David)
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