Teaching through Psalm 119, Pastor Chuck Smith comes to verses 87-88 and teaches us powerful truths on waiting on the Lord…

Psalm 119:87–88 (NLT) “They almost finished me off, but I refused to abandon your commandments. In your unfailing love, spare my life; then I can continue to obey your laws.”

The psalmist has experienced tremendous calamity. His enemies are persecuting him, they are trying to set a trap for him and it seems like God is silent.

You know those are the most difficult times in our whole spiritual experience when we are under pressure and it doesn’t seem like God is doing anything. When it seems like God is silent and the pressure is increasing and I cry unto the Lord, there is where I need to have my faith rooted in the word of God as the psalmist declares concerning his own faith. He says, “I am hoping in thy word, I know that your commandments are faithful, I did not forsake thy precepts and I will keep the testimony of thy mouth”.

It is the word of God that sustained him through these dark hours. So with us, when it seems that God is silent as far as not moving immediately to correct the evil or the wrong that we see and we wonder “Lord how long are you going to let this go on”? We pray and we are concerned about the situation and nothing seems to improve, we need then to go back to the word of God and to the promises of God and let our soul rest there in the promise of God.

How many times in my own life when the pressures are on and it seems like you are going to be swallowed up with calamity, you’ve been waiting and your eyes are failing as you wait upon the Lord and you are almost giving up on any response or action? Then the spirit leads you back to the word and you realize the faithfulness of God too and there is where your soul found rest, “God it is in your hands and I’m going to trust in you”. That is such a beautiful place of rest when you finally come to that place where you exercised your emotions and all to where you are just wrung out. This is where you don’t know where to turn and you know you can’t do anything and you come to that place where you say, “God you’re just going to have to take care of it. I just can’t do it”.

Where you really turn it over to God that is the place of commitment, that is what we mean when we talk about commitment. I’m no longer striving with it and I’m no longer struggling with it. I’ve turned it over to the Lord and put it in his hands and said, “Lord, you’re just going to have to take care of it”. When I come to that place of full commitment then I rest because it’s in the Lord’s hands.

People are always trying to get you back in the middle of it and scare you but you have that beautiful rest, it’s in the Lord’s hands. Come what may, so the whole thing collapses, so the whole thing goes down the tubes, it’s in his hands he must want it to go down the tubes. How can I stop it if that’s what he wants? It’s in his hands and you come to that rest of commitment. As long I’m striving to see my will done I’m going to wrestle with it and I’m going to have mental turmoil when I’m insisting that God you do it my way or else. There is no rest as long as I am pushing and insisting that God see it my way and do it my way but when I say, “Lord you just do it, you just take care of it, the way you know is best. You do with it what you want to do” then I can kick back and say, “Well, it’s in his hands. God’s going to take care of it”.

— Pastor Chuck Smith