He Will Sustain You

    Have you ever been stressed out? Have you ever felt like a tree blowing in the wind? Have you ever felt like you wanted to come home from a long day of work and sit in your recliner for a few minutes before having to hold your crying 35 lb. toddler while changing your newborn's diaper, cooking supper, sweeping up mounds of spilled salt off the table and floor, folding a load of laundry, and hearing from your exhausted wife, "you've got it easy compared to my last five hours"?

    Man, me too...

    God has been teaching me a lesson lately that I thought I understood pretty well before having our second child (our sweet girl, Zion Grace). I wish I could learn this lesson once and be done, but I am always amazed at how easily I forget. In this season of busyness at work and baby/toddler management, I am relearning how to live like Psalm 55:22,

"Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved."

    In Psalm 55, King David was stressed out with much more serious problems than the dirty diapers and screaming kids that I have been dealing with; and yet, he was confident in his Lord enough to say, "But I call to God and the LORD will save me" (v.16) and "He redeems my soul in safety from the battle that I wage" (v.18). 

    If God can redeem David from the (literal) battle that he waged, surely He can redeem me from the (typical dad problems) battle that I wage; and that is exactly what David says - "Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you." David says that we all can cast our own burdens on God, whatever they are. Peter shares the same idea in 1 Peter 5:7, "casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you." How encouraging it is to know that God Himself cares about what stresses us out! He cares enough that He wants to be the one we come to for help with every one of our problems.

    When you go to God with your burdens, "he will sustain you." "Give us this day our daily bread," Jesus says in His example prayer (Matthew 6:11). God provides everything we need to make it through our stressful days - we just need to look to Him for those needs instead of trying to meet our needs through other "stress management" tactics (blowing off steam, lashing out, doom scrolling, over-complaining, etc.).

    Maybe you agree with all this in theory, but you see a problem with the last statement in Psalm 55:22, "he will never permit the righteous to be moved." If you are like me your response is, "I am not righteous, so this must not apply to me." God's response to that is "Yes you are, and yes it does, in Christ." 

    In Philippians 3:9 the apostle Paul describes himself as "not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith." Outside of Christ we lack righteousness, but through a faith relationship with Christ He has given us His own righteousness.

    When we have placed our faith in Christ, we are clean, pure, and righteous in God's sight; and He will "never permit [us] to be moved"! As Spurgeon says in his comment on this verse, 

He may move like the boughs of a tree in the tempest, but he shall never be moved like a tree torn up by the roots. He stands firm who stands in God. Many would destroy the saints, but God has not suffered it, and never will. Like pillars, the godly stand immovable, to the glory of the Great Architect. (The Treasury of David, Vol. 1, p.451)

    I find great comfort in Psalm 55:22. This verse shows me that it is okay to be burdened by the difficulties I face on a daily basis; but also that I can take these burdens to a God who sees, cares, and acts on my behalf. When I feel like a tree blowing in the wind, I can trust my Lord that He will preserve me and care for me. As I call on the Lord and "walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith" (Colossians 2:7), I can trust that He will sustain me.