WE OUGHT NEVER TO BE OUT OF THS SHADOW OF GOD.
“He, who dwells in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress: My God, in Him I will trust’”(Psalms 91:1, 2)
All The Psalms are from God and are wonderful!
“This Psalm is without a title, and we have no means of ascertaining either the name of its writer, or the date of its composition, with certainty. The Jewish doctors consider that when the author’s name is not mentioned we may assign the Psalm to the last named writer; and, if so, this is another Psalm of Moses, the man of God. Many expressions here used are similar to those of Moses in Deuteronomy, and the internal evidence, from the peculiar idioms, would point towards him as the composer. In the whole collection there is not a more cheering Psalm, its tone is elevated and sustained throughout, faith is at its best, and speaks nobly” (Spurgeon).
God is a shelter, a refuge when we are afraid. The writer’s faith in the Almighty God as Protector would carry him through all the dangers and fears of life. This should be a picture of our trust—trading all our fears for faith in him, no matter how intense our fears. To do this we must “dwell” and “rest” with him (91:1). By entrusting ourselves to his protection and pledging our daily devotion to him, we will be kept safe.
Someone has said that Psalm 91 is an expanded commentary on the great cry of the apostle Paul: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). God promises us shelter, covering, and comprehensive protection based on His very nature. We live in a scary world today—unless we turn to the word of God and seek God’s promises that cover and protect our lives—we continue in fear and the devil is always waiting to seek us out and try to destroy our beliefs in God and His promises. Those who claim the promise and dwell in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. God offers us security, say the psalmist by providing secret shelter.
If we make the choice to dwell in His secret place, as the psalmist puts it, then God’s response will be to treat us as His guests. Almighty God is saying, in effect, “When you dwell in My most secret place, I promise to be your divine host with the sacred responsibility of covering and caring for you.” When we deposit our trust in Him, then He guarantees He will give us His sheltering protection against all that harms us—until our duty is done and our race is finished in His service.
We will still go through trials. That is part of life. But if we are “dwelling” in communion with God, if we are accepting the shelter only He can give, then we will be safe until our work for the Lord is over, until our time on this earth is done. Our security does not rest in our weak, feeble, timid, fragile, finite humanity—not for a moment. Our security is in clinging to a God who takes care of those who take the conscious step of faith to believe.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress. To take up a general truth and make it our own by personal faith is the highest wisdom. It is but poor comfort to say ‘the Lord is a refuge,’ but to say he is my refuge, is the essence of consolation.
Men are apt enough to proclaim their doubts, and even to boast of them, indeed there is a party nowadays of the most audacious pretenders to culture and thought, who glory in casting suspicion upon everything: hence it becomes the duty of all true believers to speak out and testify with calm courage to their own well grounded reliance upon their God. Let others say what they will, be it ours to say of the Lord, “He is my refuge.” But what we say we must prove by our actions, we must fly to the Lord for shelter, and not to an arm of flesh. The bird flies away to the thicket, and the fox hastens to its hole, every creature uses its refuge in the hour of danger, and even so in all peril or fear of peril let us flee unto Jehovah, the Eternal Protector of his own. Let us, when we are secure in the Lord, rejoice that our position is unassailable, for he is our fortress as well as our refuge. Walls cannot keep out the pestilence, but the Lord can.
My God! In him will I trust! “My God” means all, and more than all, that heart can conceive by way of security. He, who dwells in an impregnable fortress, naturally trusts in it; and shall not he who dwells in God feel himself well at ease, and repose his soul in safety? We have trusted in God, let us trust him still. He has never failed us, why then should we suspect him? To trust in man is natural to fallen nature, to trust in God should be as natural to regenerated nature. Where there is every reason and warrant for faith, we ought to place our confidence without hesitancy or wavering.
The shadow of God is not the occasional resort, but the constant abiding place of the saint. Here we find not only our consolation, but our habitation, not only a loved haunt, but a home. It is to dwellers, not to visitors, that the Lord promises his protection. “He that dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide, under the shadow of the Almighty.” That shadow shall preserve him, from nightly terror from the arrows of war and of pestilence, from death and from destruction. Guarded omnipotence—the chosen of the Lord are always safe; as they dwell in the holy place. As the people of God we are always under the protection of the Most High. Wherever we go, whatever we suffer, whatever may be our difficulties, temptations, trials, or perplexities, we are always “under the shadow of the Almighty.”
