Rescue me, O LORD, from evil men; protect me from men of violence, who devise evil plans in their hearts and stir up war every day. They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent’s; the poison of vipers is on their lips.
Keep me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked; protect me from men of violence who plan to trip my feet. Proud men have hidden a snare for me; they have spread out the cords of their net and have set traps for me along my path.
O LORD, I say to you, “You are my God.” Hear, O LORD, my cry for mercy. O Sovereign LORD, my strong deliverer, who shields my head in the day of battle- do not grant the wicked their desires, O LORD; do not let their plans succeed, or they will become proud.
Let the heads of those who surround me be covered with the trouble their lips have caused. Let burning coals fall upon them; may they be thrown into the fire, into miry pits, never to rise. Let slanderers not be established in the land; may disaster hunt down men of violence. I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy. Surely the righteous will praise your name and the upright will live before you.
Lots of people are writing in these days, wondering if the Lord is going to trigger the Rapture before things get any worse. Of course no one can answer that question. But there are a couple of things we know for sure. One is that He’s promised to rescue us from the wrath to come (1 Thes. 1:10) which He can do at any time.
There’s no question that the so-called birth pangs that lead up to the End Time judgments are getting more frequent and more intense, but I don’t think anyone believes they’ve maxed out. And even when they do, they won’t be anywhere near as bad as what will surely follow. And that brings us to the second thing we know for sure. If we’ll just seek His Kingdom and His righteousness, He’ll see that all our needs are met in the time between now and the Rapture. (Matt. 6:31-33)
Seeking His Kingdom requires letting go of ours by not worrying about how things are going to work out for us here and leaving that to Him. His righteousness we’re to seek is the one that’s imputed to us by faith (Romans 3:21-24) not by our futile works. This is what guarantees our needs being met.
As one who has experienced it, I can tell you this is a lot harder than it looks. Because you’ve been there too, some of you have an idea how hard it was for me to stand there helplessly while He hammered away at the foundations of my kingdom until they crumbled out from under me, but you also know it had to happen before I could begin seeking His. And shedding my carefully crafted facade of self sufficiency to reveal the hopeless, helpless, worthless, and useless sinner I really am was the most painful thing I can ever remember experiencing. But being caught in His loving arms made both worth while. The life He had been waiting to give me, and that I had been so strongly resisting, is better by far than anything I had ever dreamed of.
If you’re still clinging to the things of this world, my advice is to surrender now. Don’t go kicking and screaming into the kingdom He’s prepared for us. But seeing all these things happening around you stand up and lift up your head because your redemption is drawing near. Remember, this is not a surrender into defeat. This is a surrender into victory.