Psalms 55:22
Cast your burden on the Lord,
and he will sustain you;
he will never permit
the righteous to be moved.
In Psalm 55, David is crying out to God to sustain him and to give him peace in the midst of conflict. We are not told "who," but apparently one of David's closest friends has decided to betray him to King Saul. Earlier in the Psalm David address this person as follows in regard to who was causing the conflict in his life:
Psalms 55:12-13
For it is not an enemy who taunts me—
then I could bear it;
it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me—
then I could hide from him.
But it is you, a man, my equal,
my companion, my familiar friend.
God knows those who oppose us and it is God we should turn to during that opposition. In the midst of that struggle, David reminds us of a sustaining truth: God cares for us, even when others don't, or aren't. We tend to want to trust people too much. We like to think about those we know in the context of, "everybody is basically really nice and good." Yet, what we have in this text indicates for us that even those we closely know will, at times, conflict with us. Our ability to, at that moment, cast our burden upon God is a key to our success in dealing with this type of conflict in our lives. The reason we can give this to God, according to David's thought, is that The Lord will "sustain" us and "never permit" us from being moved. The word "moved" is used 35 times in the O.T. and all but about ten are used in the Psalms. The word means to slip or stumble. Even though those around us may try to cause us to stumble and fall; or Satan may try to cause us to slip into a state of apostasy, God is there to protect and sustain us and make sure we will NEVER be moved from our position in Christ, of righteousness. Romans 8:1 says there is "therefore NOW no condemnation for them who are in "Christ Jesus." We can rejoice that God is the God of sustaining us, despite anyone who wants to harm us or cause us to stumble. Even if it is someone who used to love us and worship with us.
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