What Belongs To God
“Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love. For you will render to a man according to his work.”
God can and will claim ownership of power and love. Who else could make such an all-encompassing declaration about themselves? We consider the nature and character of God this morning.
I cherish Psalm 62 as an honest and raw conversation about the back and forth place we find ourselves in when facing trials, particularly relational difficulties. David is being beaten down by injustice and worn out by the unrighteous. He goes into detail about how frustrated and discouraged he is about the oppression all around him until he pauses and nearly cuts himself off.
He immediately shifts his tone in Psalm 62:5, restating the first verse, saying, “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.” Just like that, David reorients himself around the presence of God. Staring down obvious wickedness, David positions his soul in dependence on God. No matter how bad things get, we can trust in the Lord to be our refuge.
David’s statement at the end of this Psalm is significant. Perhaps if we have been walking with the Lord for a bit, we will subconsciously get that the idea of waiting on the Lord is a good thing. But from the outside, there must be a logically good reason to stop and not take action when there are blatant issues around us. We would be foolish to put our trust in just anyone or anything. We need evidence that God can handle what we are facing if we are going to pass off the solution to him.
That is why David writes the last verse. In a sense, he is justifying his decision to willfully move into waiting. If I could modernize his message, it might sound something like this: God owns love and power. He is the only one who can handle our trial. He operates from justice and knows how to respond to the righteous and the wicked. That is why I am going to wait on the Lord.
Ultimately, the power and love of God will always supersede the magnitude of our trials. Our hope is that even the worst situations are not beyond the power and love of God to handle with justice.
First, I want to invite you to meditate on God’s nature as the key holder of power and love. They belong to him and cannot be taken away. Second, I want to invite you to reposition your soul in a posture of waiting. It may be challenging if the place you are in seems overwhelming, but I am confident that we will only find hope and heaven’s solutions when we take the radical risk to wait on the Lord. In doing so, we are prophetically declaring that God can and will deliver his people.
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