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I am reading through the Old Testament in my daily devotions on a plan that will take me through the Bible chronologically throughout the year. I have been reading through the books of Samuel and Chronicles that tell the story of David’s life, among other things, and I am reading some of the Psalms David wrote. Today, I read Psalm 18.

Psalm 18 is a song David wrote to the Lord “when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.” The reading plan I am following is chronological, and that would put this Psalm near the end of David’s life. The timing of if make the things that strike me about it all the more… well… striking.

The most striking thing about the Psalm (and David’s life) is that he implicitly and intimately trusted God. We see this in the first five verses:

¹ I love you, Lord, my strength.

² The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
    my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,
    my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

³ I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
    and I have been saved from my enemies.
⁴ The cords of death entangled me;
    the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
⁵ The cords of the grave coiled around me;
    the snares of death confronted me.

David always turned to God. When he was overwhelmed, as expressed in this Psalm, he turned to God. When he was victorious, he turned to God. When he failed to live up to God’s standards, he turned to God, and when tragedy struck, he turned to God.

In everything David did, he was fully and intimately mindful of God. Here David said, “In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to God for help.” (Ps. 18:6) All of David’s life was lived in relation to and in orientation toward God.

What strikes me about the following verses will, perhaps, curl the hair of people who say we must take every word of the Bible literally. None of it should be taken literally, as should be evident to anyone who reads it, but the point is clear:

From his temple he heard my voice;
    my cry came before him, into his ears.
⁷ The earth trembled and quaked,
    and the foundations of the mountains shook;
    they trembled because he was angry.
⁸ Smoke rose from his nostrils;
    consuming fire came from his mouth,
    burning coals blazed out of it.
⁹ He parted the heavens and came down;
    dark clouds were under his feet.
¹⁰ He mounted the cherubim and flew;
    he soared on the wings of the wind.
¹¹ He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him—
    the dark rain clouds of the sky.
¹² Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced,
    with hailstones and bolts of lightning.
¹³ The Lord thundered from heaven;
    the voice of the Most High resounded.
¹⁴ He shot his arrows and scattered the enemy,
    with great bolts of lightning he routed them.
¹⁵ The valleys of the sea were exposed
    and the foundations of the earth laid bare
at your rebuke, Lord,
    at the blast of breath from your nostrils.

Where exactly is God’s temple? (David didn’t build a temple for God; his son, Solomon, did that.) Did smoke really rise from God’s nostrils and fire and burning coals come out of His mouth? Does God have nostrils or a mouth? Did God really mount cherubim and fly on the wings of the wind? Does the wind have wings? Did God shoot arrows? Were the valleys of the sea exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare for David? In a word: no.

Obviously, this is a psalm, a song that David wrote, that is embellished with artistic expression. He used artistic license to express his gratitude toward God who saved him and protected him from his enemies.

Have you ever wondered what David might have said if/when God didn’t save him? Was David a fair-weather believer who only believed when things were going well for him? In a word: no.

Read Psalm 51. It was written after David committed the heinously immoral act of adultery with one of his commander’s wives while he was out fighting for David. To compound evil with evil, David tried to cover up his transgression in several ways. When David was still at risk of exposure for what he did, he ordered the commander to the front line with instructions to abandon him to his death – so that no one would know about David’s fling with the commander’s wife.

David coveted his neighbor’s wife though David was king and had everything he could possibly want. He took advantage of his position and satisfied his lust at the expense of his neighbor and neighbor’s family.

David lied about it and schemed to cover it up. When the cover up didn’t work, David essentially “put a hit out” on his neighbor, one of his own men.

David was selfish, deceitful, immoral and cowardly. He went to extreme measures to protect himself from being found out to save his own pride and reputation and had an innocent man killed to protect himself.

When Nathan, the prophet, put all the pieces of the puzzle together and confronted him, David turned to God. Psalm 51 was David’s response to God, confessing his sin, asking for mercy and for God’s cleansing.

God did forgive him, but God didn’t save him from the consequences of his sin. The son borne to Bathsheba, the woman he violated, fell ill and died, just as Nathan prophesied. David mourned and fasted and begged God for days to save his son, but he died anyway.

David was so distraught that his servants feared giving him the news. When David found out, however, he stopped mourning and “went into the Lord’s house to worship”. When asked why the sudden change in attitude, David said:

“While the baby was still alive, I fasted, and I cried. I thought, ‘Who knows? Maybe the Lord will feel sorry for me and let the baby live.’ But now that the baby is dead, why should I fast? I can’t bring him back to life. Someday I will go to him, but he cannot come back to me.”

David accepted what happened to him. He accepted the consequences. David knew he wasn’t in control. He knew God was in control.

I am not sure that God actually controls everything that happens in our lives. Jesus dispelled that idea when he was questioned about a group of worshipers who were killed at the order of Pontius Pilate in the synagogue in Galilee. Jesus said they weren’t greater sinners than anyone else, and neither were the people who died when a tower in Siloam collapsed. But, Jesus said, the people listening to him should repent, lest they too perish! (See Luke 13:1-9)

We are all going to die some day, sooner or later, whether by natural causes, illness, or sudden catastrophe. David, too, knew he was going to die someday. (“Someday I will go to him [his son], but he cannot come back to me.”) David knew he couldn’t change anything.

David resigned himself to whatever happened in his life, whether in victory, in defeat, in the failure of his own sinfulness, in thanksgiving for blessings he enjoyed or in mourning his loses. In all these things and everything else David turned to God.

This was David’s secret: he always turned to God. He lived his life in relation to God. David knew God was in control, and he wasn’t; and he was ok with that.

So many of us “fight” God on that point. We want it our way. We want to be in control of our lives, and we live in the delusion that we can control our lives.

Because of that, when the reality sets in (that we aren’t in control), we get mad at God. We demand our rights. We cry, “It isn’t fair!” We shake our fists at God.

I’ve come to learn that even that kind of response is “ok” (it’s “human” after all), as long as we turn to God. We can vent to God because He knows our feelings. He knows our hearts anyway! So, we might as well be honest with ourselves and God and have it out.

God can handle our frustrations and anger. Turning to God in all things like David is the way God wants us to live. Because God is a father to us – a perfect Father – we can trust Him with anything and everything we face in our lives, including our own doubts and feelings.

Ultimately, we can say, like David, that someday we will go to be with the loved ones we have lost. We can rejoice in our victories, giving thanks to God for them, and we can mourn our losses and failures in God’s presence, pouring our grief and frustrations out to him.

God is not distant from us. He knows us intimately. (See David’s Psalm 139) He is also “acquainted with grief”, because God experienced all the sorrows, rejection, and infirmities that we experience – and even the full weight of our sin. (See Isaiah 53:2-4) He knows out grief intimately.

Since God knows us intimately and is intimately familiar with all that we go through, we can turn to God in everything, like David did.

In the Psalms David wrote, we get an intimate view of a person living life orientated toward God through all of life’s ins and outs and ups and downs. In reading the Psalms, we learn the secret of David, which is to turn to God always, in everything that we go through, to be intimate with God.

And, when all is said and done, God will sustain us. He meets us where we are. He delights in us and loves us – not for what we have done, but for who we are, people He created in His image with the purpose of having communion with Him. Knowing this and trusting this allows us to face the giants in our lives with confidence that, no matter what, God is with us, and He loves us.