1 Sam 30:6, Moreover David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, for all the people were embittered, each one because of his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
	Once again we are dealing with the wonderful truth that we can strengthen ourselves in the Lord whenever we are facing times of distress. This is especially true with all those issues that are so overwhelming in the breadth and depth of utter hostility and animosity and despair. We are able, by the wondrous grace and mercy and love of God, to strengthen ourselves in the reality that He does have all things well in hand! 
There is nothing outside the scope of His ability and His power and His knowledge which could ever set aside the truth that He is the Sovereign Lord God Almighty! Everything functions only as ordained by His plan and His purpose.
	Accordingly, we find ourselves once again immersed in the praise of the Psalmist to the Lord God, Jehovah, Yahweh, throughout the Psalms. The writer was never in doubt about the manifest salvation of God. There is the delight in the truth that, as The Lord proved Himself faithful and true over and over and over again without fail, the Psalmist could do nothing other than sing and worship and declare the goodness of God.
	Consider what we read and rejoice in together in Ps 34:1-8. Ps 34:1-8, I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; The humble shall hear it and rejoice. O magnify the Lord with me, And let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord, and He answered me, And delivered me from all my fears. They looked to Him and were radiant, And their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried and the Lord heard him, And saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, And rescues them. O taste and see that the Lord is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! 
	The abundant fullness of the working power and might and magnificence of Jehovah brings forth, from the utter depths of our beings, the exalting praise and honor and adoration that He, Alone, is due. The entire universe sings forth His worship as we join in the growing chorus of the anthem of the glory and the majesty of the Most High and Exalted Lord God, Creator of the heavens and the earth.
	In that heart, as we face the difficulties and the issues of life, we look to God and we call out to Him. We learn to trust Him explicitly in the every trial, situation, and circumstance. Our eyes become trained to watch to see how God will manifest His saving power and grace and mercy in the most seemingly impossible situations. 
Accordingly, we know that Our Salvation is not in the hands of men, not in the schemes of our minds, and absolutely not in the deceitful promises of this age! God, Alone, is our shield and our source and our Savior! In Him, we place every confidence with the full assurance that He will prove Himself mighty in the fulfillment of His plan and His purpose in our lives.
	Again we read and rejoice in the Psalmist’s declarations of Ps 40:1-3. Ps 40:1-3, I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay; And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. And He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear, And will trust in the Lord. 
	Note the fact that the Psalmist was not kept from having to go through the trials and the hard times. He was in the pit of destruction, fully enduring and waiting for the deliverance that was sure and promised by the Lord God, Jehovah. He waited for the Lord, and set his heart and his mind and his trust on Yahweh. 
In the depths of dealing with the taunts and the accusations of this age, he knew Who was His Savior. In that reality, even while he was being assaulted by those vile elements that were trying to tell him he was a fool, that there was no help coming, that only surrender to the power of this age would bring relief from the fires and the torments and the anguish, the Psalmist held to Jehovah. This age puts forth the utter and dire deception that only a dupe would hold onto the Lord with all our heart and with all our mind and with all our strength and with all our being. 
	But look at the result of the faithful adherence to God and to God, Alone. … And He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay; And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. 
There was nothing that could stop the hand of God from bringing forth that deliverance and that salvation from the encroachments and the snares and the wiles and the entrapments of this age. As we learn to strengthen ourselves in the reality that God does have all things well in hand, then we will absolutely relish the manner of seeing God at work to do even the most impossible of things in the supreme power of His saving grace! 
	This will always result in the declaration of the goodness and the admiration and the adoration of the Lord with our mouths and with our hearts and with our entire essence. We will joyfully give Him the praise and the honor and the glory that He is due, moment by moment and day by day. He, Alone, is worthy of all our worship, as we acclaim Him in the assembly of those who need to hear and to witness the mighty deliverance of God in their own lives and dire circumstances. 
As we are so encouraged by the course of the Psalmist’s encounters with the awesome working power of God, so are others to be seeing His Hand at work in the manner of bringing forth His will in our lives. As we sing forth the praise of our deliverance, so will others be heartened and encouraged to trust in the faithful salvation of God and so join with us in our songs of praise and adoration. 
Again, there is that immediate support for us in terms of learning to strengthen ourselves in the Lord as declared by the Psalmist. Consider Ps 42:5-8. 
Ps 42:5-8, Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence. O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I remember Thee from the land of the Jordan, And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the sound of Thy waterfalls; All Thy breakers and Thy waves have rolled over me. The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime; And His song will be with me in the night, A prayer to the God of my life. 
	This is so often the manner of how we feel and how we allow ourselves to be drawn down and discouraged. Notice that the Psalmist had to encourage himself, his soul, to be lifted up from the pit of depression. How many times are we caught in that downward spiral into the depths of despair and melancholy and glum? It seems that everything around us is just taunting us to lay down and give up. Over and over again the waves of depression crash on our minds and our imaginations as to the worse case scenarios. Nothing goes right and all our plans and hopes seem to be dashed against the rocks of confusion and destruction. 
	That is where the Psalmist then shows us the manner in which we practice that strengthening ourselves in the Lord. He recounts to himself, and to us, the glory of God and the fulfillment of his complete hope in Jehovah. That begins the well spring of joy and praise and adoration unto God which lifts us up from that despair into the truth that God has all things well in His hands! There is a joy and a peace that replaces the dread and the glum and the depression as we begin to sing those songs of praise and adoration, recounting how God has worked time and time again to make Himself the manifest reality of our lives. 
	Please keep in mind, this is not a gimmick. This is not a mantra of this age. This is not a claim it and get it type of exercise. This is the reality of the power of God Who has proven Himself ever and forever true and mighty in every manner of His dealings and His promises with us! As we begin to count those blessings of God, as we dwell on the truth of His powerful intervention in our lives every time the need has existed, we begin to find ourselves unable to do anything but declare that God is good! His joy fills our hearts, and His beauty wrests our vision away from us and onto His glorious face!
	The Psalmist, in Ps 56:1-4, also deals with those times when we are actually accosted by the hatred and the animosity of those who do not want to deal with a person who knows the Lord God Almighty. Many of us have had those neighbors and even those family members who want nothing to do with us because of our relationship with Christ. We are an anathema to the way that they live their lives and thus are treated with greatest hostility and animosity and virulent anger. 
Each interaction with them is a battleground of hostility and having to be on guard against the encroachments and the snares that are set to try to prove that we are phonies and our words are false. They try to convince themselves in the futile hope that they certainly are not in peril of eternal damnation because they are basically good and decent people. It is a vicious and miserable time for each person as their hatred of Christ and His Holiness is unleashed against us as the representative members of His Body.
Ps 56:1-4, Be gracious to me, O God, for man has trampled upon me; Fighting all day long he oppresses me. My foes have trampled upon me all day long, For they are many who fight proudly against me. When I am afraid, I will put my trust in Thee. In God, whose word I praise, In God I have put my trust; I shall not be afraid. What can mere man do to me? 
	…What can mere man do to me? That is the summation of what we are attempting to come to grips with in this consideration. Mankind lives in fear of the handiwork of other peoples. All around us are those anxieties and rumors and dread of the inevitable physical death that awaits every person born of flesh and blood. 
There is a vast difference, however, when we are set in the truth that we belong to God and that we can strengthen ourselves in Him. It is in the truth that no matter what happens to our physical bodies, we are His Beloved Children. We are His and He will protect and keep us for all the ages of eternity yet before us. While we will suffer in our physical beings, that is but for less than the blink of the eye when set against the vast scope of what awaits us forever in Jesus Christ. 
	And, lest anyone think that we are talking about having to wait to get to heaven to enjoy the presence of God, may we never so limit Him and His abiding presence this very day, and every moment of every day. He is with us through all the physical decline and illness and torturous intent that could otherwise overwhelm us on this earth right now. We do have the issues of these imperfect physical bodies, but even in these mortal encasements of our beings, we can find that rest in Christ. We can live this very moment in the trust that He will see us through it all in the magnificence of His abiding grace and mercy and love. 
	Several aspects come to mind in the detailing of this truth. The first deals with the veracity that we only are so enshrouded in these imperfect, physical bodies for the most pittance of time. When we truly look at what our lives involve now that we are the recipients of the salvation of God in Jesus Christ, it is the mere wisp of a second. Even if we live 100 or more years on this earth, when we begin to calculate, with the limited resources of our measurement of time, the eons that are part of eternity, we must fall on our knees and just thank God!
Nothing can compare with the so great Love with which God has blessed us in the reality of what His plan and His foreordained will have lavished upon those who love Him and who believe in Him and who are the redeemed in Jesus Christ. The mere pittance of decades in the grand vision of 100’s of thousands of millions of billions of trillions of indescribably glorious ages singing the praises and adoration and relishing the immediate presence of the Eternal Sovereign just is incomprehensible! 
	The second aspect is that the very worst that any power, human or otherwise, can do to us is to put us in the immediate presence of God. We may be killed but that is only being put into the direct glory of the Lord God Almighty. We may be tortured and abused, as was the Apostle Paul, as we know so fully, but that only gives greater opportunity to learn to rely upon the grace and the mercy and the comfort and the healing power of Jehovah Jirah, Our Provider. Anything that man can do to us is without any true fear on our part because it all brings forth that greater and much more tremendous relationship with Christ Who sees us through to the very end of our days on this earth. 
	This is such a reality that the Psalmist repeats it in verses 10+11 for emphasis. Ps 56:10+11, In God, whose word I praise, In the Lord, whose word I praise, In God I have put my trust, I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? 
	We need to learn what it means to strengthen ourselves in the Lord by learning to trust Him! One of the great means of that trust being developed is as we learn to cherish all that He has put before us in His Word. That means that we spend the time with Him in reading and dwelling on those truths that He has so wondrously given us. It means that we ponder what He tells us and that we obey as He directs through the manner of His Holy Spirit making His Word alive in us. 
	In so doing, as we are strengthened in the Lord, our souls and our minds and our hearts become set upon the foundational truth that there is nothing that man can do to us which removes us from the love and the salvation that is ours in Christ Jesus! We may be put to death, but that will not negate the fact that we belong to God and that He has us well in His hand. We are absolutely covered by the great gift of His redeeming power in Jesus Christ! So be it!
Moreover David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, for all the people were embittered, each one because of his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. Amen.

This morning’s benediction, with all joy in Christ Jesus, is Rev 19:11. And I saw heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True; and in righteousness He judges and wages war. Amen.