Rejoicing in God's Salvation

My heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. (Psalm 13:5b)

Read: Ps. 13; I Sam. 2:1; Matt. 2:10; Acts 8:39; Rom. 5:2

What Is God Saying?

This Psalm deals with some heavy things, such as pain in my soul, sorrow in my heart, being forgotten by God, and losing out to an enemy who when he gets me down rejoices. It also shows the reader who is experiencing the downside of life where to turn. It points out a greater kind of rejoicing and for a better reason. ‘My heart shall rej01ce in thy salvation.’ Our salvation is a good reason to rejoice. Hannah rejoiced because of salvation in a song that Mary echoed when Jesus was born and salvation had come. The Wise Men rejoiced when they saw the star that led them to the infant Jesus and salvation (Mt. 2:10). The Ethiopian Eunuch rejoiced in the discovery of salvation through Philip's ministry of the Word (Acts 8:39). Christians rejoice in hope and even in suffering since they have peace with God—salvation (Rom. 5:2-3).

How Does This Apply To Us?

Rejoicing and Salvation belong together. The coming of Jesus into this world can never be a matter of academic aloofness or objective study. Because it is real and because it means so much it goes right to the heart, making it leap with joy. It is the emotion felt when a woman finds a lost coin, a shepherd finds a lost sheep, and a waiting Father sees his lost son on the horizon (Luke 15). It is not like a student poring over a book in the library. It is more like a student with a thousand others, rejoicing over a touchdown on the field. It is a soldier seeing a light in the window or a returning prisoner finding yellow ribbons tied all over the tree. In prayer let us remember all the joy we have drawn from the wells of salvation. It should make quite a list.

Pray With Me

O God, it was in Your loving heart that my salvation was conceived. It was by Your boundless mercy that Jesus Christ came to make my salvation a reality. I am sorry that I so often regard Your greatest gift with academic interest. I am grateful for it with my mind but in my heart, there is, sometimes, apathy. Heaven is mine for nothing except the bringing of a broken and contrite heart. Sin, both its stain on my life and its reign in my heart, is removed in a moment of faith. Doubt that makes every step a cautious and fearful one is replaced by a vision of Your holy will and perfect plan. Death, a swaggering colossus on the journey of every man's life, lies defeated and impotent in the glory of one resurrection morning.

All this is Thy salvation. All this is Your salvation for me as if I alone were the special object of Your redeeming grace. Yet the infinite sacrifice of Christ is also for anyone, anywhere, who believes in His name. Thy salvation can be shared as water flowing freely and endlessly from the eternal spring of divine love. This is reason to rejoice, this is reason to live in glad triumph over all the powers of darkness, this is reason to rise continuously above the sad confusion and turmoil of meaningless existence. Your patient love has not knocked in vain on the doors of my heart and faith is not grounded on history's cruelest lie. Deep has called unto deep. Love has awakened love. His life from the dead gives me life from the dead. I may, I should, I shall rejoice in thy salvation.

Through Him who intended us to possess His joy, and to possess it fully. Amen.

Moving On In The Life of Prayer

We begin our prayer and keep moving on in prayer by taking constant inventory of the blessings that stem from salvation: forgiveness of sin, off-loading guilt, getting ourselves off our hands and being free to love another, being free to bring another to the throne of grace, having peace with God and the peace of God, being privileged to become an instrument of God's peace, living fully now, and having bright hope for tomorrow. Let us rejoice in God's salvation and gradually we will be able to rejoice in everything else that has value beauty, beautiful truths, unhampered joy in the best things of life, goodness that is not stuffy, hope that will never let us down, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.