Whom Shall I Fear?
April 1, 2020·Ben McEntee
Church family, I invite you to read Psalm 27 and then read this devotional.
In Psalm 27, David opens with the beautifully joyous lines: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
What a fitting piece of Scripture to read in these days of uncertainty and fear. This strong and courageous introduction is filled with God’s strength coming against the psalmist’s enemies and, in verse 6, these triumphant words crescendo into out-and-out praise to God: “I will sing and make melody to the Lord.”
If there’s one thing I can say about fear, it’s this: praise and worship of God empties fear of its power over our lives. In this season, I‘ve heard families share how worship music has been a comfort in their homes during this time of social distancing, and I’ve experienced this in my own home. Worshiping God confronts fear in our hearts and directs our affections toward Him, Who is our rock and shield and ever-present help.
Now, if David’s psalm ended there, we could simply congratulate ourselves and say, “If God is for us, who can be against us?!” (Romans 8:31), and put that on Instagram and call ourselves good! But David continues and invites us to go much deeper. It’s in the rest of the psalm where we learn that proclaiming God is our strength and salvation is one thing — living it out is another.
After his initial sign of strength and hope in the Lord, David makes a turn toward anguish and cries out to God in verse 9: “Turn not your servant away in anger, O You who have been my help.” This is followed by a startling description of isolation in verse 10: “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.”
As David shares with us his personal struggles of isolation, cries for help, and calling out to God, we are brought to new territory in the psalm, where fear and despair appear to tread without any confrontation at all, and we might ask: Where is the light?! Where is our salvation?! Where is God in all of this?! And perhaps that’s you today. In this moment, right now, wondering where is God in our current struggle on earth?
And if that’s you, I invite you to respond in the way David did to his own struggle, as he writes in verse 13: “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord.” Here we have a declaration of faith, followed by this call to action in verse 14: “Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage.” In crisis, the deeper truth becomes clear. When faith is cultivated in our hearts, it produces action in our daily lives, even in difficult times. That’s because faith is not bound by our circumstances. It is rooted and established in our God. He is unshakable, immeasurable, and He holds us up in His everlasting arms and we cry out, “whom shall I fear?!”
Pastor Ben McEntee
