My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.
How long will you assault a man? Would all of you throw him down— this leaning wall, this tottering fence? They fully intend to topple him from his lofty place; they take delight in lies. With their mouths they bless, but in their hearts they curse.
Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.
Lowborn men are but a breath, the highborn are but a lie; if weighed on a balance, they are nothing;
together they are only a breath. Do not trust in extortion or take pride in stolen goods; though your riches increase, do not set your heart on them.
One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving. Surely you will reward each person according to what he has done.
God is strong and God is loving. What more could you ask of one Who’s sworn to protect you. “And surely I am with you always,” Jesus promised, “Even to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20) He’s also faithful, patient, forgiving, and the list goes on.
“Let not your hearts be troubled,” He told His disciples. “You trust in God. Trust also in me.” (John 14:1) He was speaking to us as well. He’s trustworthy.
“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:31-32) Good question, Paul. Who can overrule God’s decisions or rescind His actions? No one can thwart His plan.
Our obstacles are right there in front of us, only too obvious, so Paul advised us to fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor. 4:18) To allow the tangible, physical things of this world, or the countering activities of our enemies to stop us is to yield to the temporary things while ignoring the permanent ones.
“What you do reveals what you believe,” wrote Henry T. Blackaby in his book, Experiencing God. “If you’re living a fearful anxiety-filled life, you’re proving your lack of confidence in God’s protection, regardless of what you say.”
When I was a young Sales Manager, a friend taught me, “Look at what a person pays conscious attention to, and you’ll learn what his sub-conscious intentions are.” No beginning sales people would ever consciously admit that they intended to fail in their new careers, but by watching their behavior I learned that I could accurately predict whether that would be the outcome. I saw that it always came down to one factor. Were they pro-active or reactive in performing their jobs?
Selling involves performing a series of learned activities in their proper sequence, and successful sales people quickly formed the habit of doing that (which allowed them to be proactive in dealing with their customers) while failures didn’t (which forced them to be reactive). It wasn’t that the failures couldn’t form this habit, but that they didn’t. It was that simple. The logic was overwhelming.
By learning the sequence so well they could follow it by habit, my successful sales people found they could be better listeners and could pick up on signals that buyers always transmit, indicating their readiness to buy or revealing their true objections. Since the next step in the sequence automatically came to mind, they were free to concentrate on what their customers were saying.
Over and over I watched others fail by skipping steps or taking them out of sequence as they worked with their customers. They had been taught the steps and their proper sequence but hadn’t practiced enough to make them into habits. Some didn’t believe it was that important, while others thought they were smart enough to “wing it.”
In the heat of the moment they often got confused and were forced into a reactive mode. Trying to remember what they were supposed to say made it impossible for them to listen to what their customers were saying and caused them to miss important buying signals. It wasn’t aptitude, intelligence, or education that determined the outcome. It was simply a matter of forming the right habits or not.
So it is with living the victorious life. If you haven’t formed the habit of trusting God in everything, and in believing what He said, you’ll get confused in the heat of an enemy attack. The things of this world will fill your mind, forcing the truth of God’s Word into the background. Remember you can only think one thought at a time.
To defend against these attacks, take the time to learn God’s promises so well that they’ll automatically come to mind in times of need. It’s critically important. You’re not smart enough to “wing it” when you’re up against Satan. My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.