Psalms 121:7-8
7 The LORD will keep you from all harm —
he will watch over your life;
8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore. (NIV)

God knows our fears and challenges, our pain and past, our shame and sin. Who is more equipped to protect us than the one who knows every threat with the power to crush every scheme designed to cause us harm?

He can supernaturally protect us. Angels have been assigned to us. They have held people through accidents that should have killed or maimed. He has moved the sun, clouds, and bodies of water to deliver, protect, and preserve His people. He provides for the birds. He clothes the grass. He has promised to be our strong tower of protection. 

Yet, we stress, worry, and overreact. We do believe that He will and can protect us. We believe this intellectually. We do not deny it. Yet, we don’t always trust what we say we believe. Trust is different from belief. The Bible says even demons believe, but they do not trust. 

Believing requires an intellectual acquiescence to Biblical truth. Trust, however, requires a behavioral shift. 

When we find ourselves overwhelmed with fear because of our apparent vulnerability to harm, there is a natural pull upon our eyes and attention to the potential pain and suffering. We run the negative possibilities through our minds repeatedly until what we fear seems inevitable. But all we have done is blind our eyes to God who can do all things. 

Meditation upon any one subject blinds us to anything else. Worry is meditating upon the negative potential of a situation, blinding us to the supernatural potential of trusting in God. Rather than saying we believe but meditating on the opposite, we need to let what we believe change our behavior. Our passage today reminds us of God’s protection, but David begins this psalm by lifting His eyes to the Lord, Maker of Heaven and Earth. He then meditates on God’s power to protect. 

The Bible says the eye is the lamp of the body. In other words, what we focus on fills our spirit. Focus on the goodness of God and be filled with hope. Focus on the seeming impossibility of a situation, and you will be filled with stress and anxiety. To trust the Lord, we must turn our eyes away from our fears and focus on His favor. He will bring the sun to warm us in the cold. And He will bring the cloud to shade us in the heat. He is God. Let’s look to Him.

Prayer: Thank you for protecting me. Give me the discipline to focus on my help, not my hurt.