From the Pastor’s Pen

Final Thoughts on Psalm 31:7-8

I will be glad and rejoice in your mercy, For You have considered my trouble; You have known my soul in adversities, And have not shut me up into the hand of my enemy; You have set my feet on a wide place.                  NKJV

In this Psalm David expresses a supreme confidence in the preserving power of his God.  He doesn’t say, “I have set my feet in a wide place,” or “My faith has set my feet on a wide place,” or “My devotion for the Lord has set my feet on a wide place,” but rather, “You (the Lord) has set my feet in a wide place (as opposed to a narrow precipice).”  David understands the great truth that he can rest on nothing but the Lord’s preserving work in his soul.

It is the Lord who has begun a good work in us; it is He who has carried it on; and it is He alone who will finish it (Phil. 1:6).  If we were left to our own strength, we would surely perish, but thanks be to God, who give us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (I Cor. 15:57).

If there is one stitch in the celestial garment of our righteousness which we are to insert ourselves, then we are lost; but this is our confidence, the Lord who began will fulfill.  He has done it all, must do it all, and will do it all.  Our confidence must not be in what we have done, nor in what we have resolved to do, but entirely in what the Lord will do.

Charles H. Spurgeon