Secure Living (Psalm 16:9)

“Down on his luck” by Frederick Mc Cubbin (PD-US)

Therefore my heart is glad and my spirit rejoices; my body also rests securely.

-Psalm 19:9 (HCSB)

Resting securely is a gift from God to all his children.

We need peaceful, restful sleep; and we also need rest while we are awake.  There is a time to work and a time to rest.  We don’t want to be restless.

David wrote may of his psalms when we was running from an enemy who wanted to kill him.  Although he was called to become king, David lived for a period of time as an outcast, in tents and caves, in the wilderness.  David lived in the opposite of the clear prophecy over his life.

David had good reasons to feel restless.  Restlessness is when you have too much adrenaline pumping through you, and you feel like you might have to flee danger.  When we read the history of David’s life, we can understand why he would struggle  with this issue.

Yet, David was able to rest securely.  The answer, from David, lies in the word “therefore”, that points up to what he wrote in the previous verses.  In other words, he says, “In light of this (what I just said)”.  Let’s find out what the “therefore” is there for.

These are the reasons that David can rest securely:

1. Lord, You are my portion and my cup of blessing;
2. You hold my future.  
3. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
4. I will praise the Lord who counsels me— even at night my conscience instructs me.
5. I keep the Lord in mind always.  Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.  

These five actions or relational manifestations from God upon David’s life and our live’s, give us security and secure rest.  We feel safe and we rest in safety, from God.

The Lord is your portion.

Our security, safety, and secure rest is in God.    Whatever other people have does not matter.  What matters is that you have God.  You are on a journey of appropriating God.  You are learning how to lay hold of your inheritance and to live in, by, and through it.

God holds our futures.

We don’t have to worry about or try to control the future, because God holds our futures.  He is very big on futures.  I need to walk into my future with God, who is and has my inheritance.

God has a ‘lot’ for each one of us.  God has made each of us uniquely fit for a life within certain boundaries.  God knows where you fit in this world and wants to place you there.  God gives us spheres of influence and has a geographic plan for our lives.

Contentment is an important value.  Many poor people are content and many rich people are discontent.  Finding God’s assigned boundary lines for your life brings contentment.

Inheritance is a big deal in the Bible.

We are supposed to pass on an inheritance to our grandchildren.  It says “children’s children”, because your inheritance from your parents is not for you to spend, but to pass on to your children.  You can spend or enjoy it, but it is meant to be something you enjoy and then pass on.  The idea is land, houses, and farms or vineyards.  Spending it all on your pleasures is not the wise or godly thing to do.

Inheritance also is the important qualities that you pass on.  I learned in family counseling school to look at a person’s grandparents and great-grandparents, if possible, to discern the root cause of a problem cropping up in a person’s life today.  A blessing or a curse may have come down as an inheritance, from a person’s previous generations.

It is an insight to keep in mind that there are invisible negative inheritances that are active in a person’s life that need to be dealt with by appropriating the blood of Jesus and his resurrection life.

An active, ongoing, intimate relationship with God.

The next thing that leads to a life of secure living, is having an active, ongoing, intimate relationship with God.  Every believer needs to be receiving counsel from God.  Your sleep should be a time when your spirit is free to rest in God and receive counsel.  The reigns of your heart should be tugged at and shaped in the night while you sleep.  This is your inheritance.

Practice the presence of God.

Lastly, we live securely – we are not insecure, because we practice the presence of God.  This too is the inheritance of all Christians.  Remember when Jesus said to the first disciples, “I will not leave you as orphans, I am coming to you”, and he was talking about the Spirit of God, who is abiding with us and in us (John 14:17-18).  

We can not forget the third member of The Trinity.  The Christian life is impossible without having a relationship day by day, with the Spirit of God.  This is the inheritance of every believer and without him, your life will be very anemic.

Every insecure feeling is an opportunity to grow in God.

Every neurotic fear that comes up is an opportunity for growth.  A neurotic fear is when we over-react or over-control, incongruously to the challenge faced.  A fear, anxiety, or worry may be completely not neurotic, as in real and authentic.  For example, fear of not having money or fear of death.  We have our anchor of our being in God.  We want that anchor to also be a power line that connects us, with our fear or anxiety, to God.  

If I am insecure and if my rest is being robbed by anxiety; salvation, healing, or freedom may be had from Christ.  The good news is good news for my whole past and even my family line.  The man who beat his wife and children, then got saved, had to learn to apply salvation to that violence that his daddy and granddaddy taught him.

By the same token, some of us need to learn to apply the gospel and salvation, healing, and deliverance to our histories, that affect our restlessness today.  It may be hard to face the original pain, suffering, loss, or abuse.  But, we need to give him all those painful memories.

Someone coined the phrase, “If you can’t feel it, you can’t get it healed”, and that is true.  When the over-reacting happens, or the need for control due to a fear of being out of control, or when the need hits to self-medicate to stop the pain.  When the insecurity hits, we need to close our eyes (if you are not driving) and learn to bring Christ to the feeling, as in letting him into that dark room.

This is the ending stanza of Psalm 16, beginning with verse 9:

Therefore
My heart is glad
And my spirit rejoices;
My body also rests securely.
For You will not abandon me to Sheol;
You will not allow Your Faithful One to see decay.
You reveal the path of life to me;
In Your presence is abundant joy;
In Your right hand are eternal pleasures.

I have previously written on Psalm 16:

Psalm 16

Psalm 16:1

Psalm 16:5

Psalm 16:5-6

Psalm 16:7
Psalm 16:7 (a second, different one)

Psalm 16:8

Footnote:

The NIV Study Bible notes state that, Psalm 16 is “A prayer for safekeeping”, and “A psalm of trust”, and the title, “A miktam is a term that remains unexplained, though it always stands in the superscription of Davidic  prayers occasioned by great danger (see Ps. 56-60)”

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For further study:
Two Hours to Freedom: A Simple and Effective Model for Healing and Deliverance by Charles H. Kraft
The Practice of The Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
Healing by Francis Macnutt
Healing The Wounded Spirit by John and Paula Sandford