Contend, O LORD, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me!
Take hold of shield and buckler, and rise up to help me!
Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers; say to my soul, “I am your salvation.”
Let them be put to shame and dishonor who seek after my life. Let them be turned back and confounded who devise evil against me.
Let them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the LORD driving them on.
Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them.
For without cause they hid their net for me; without cause they dug a pit for my life.
Let ruin come on them unawares. And let the net that they hid ensnare them; let them fall in it—to their ruin.
Then my soul shall rejoice in the LORD, exulting in his deliverance.

– Psalm 35:1-9

I’ll be honest, I chose this passage and date randomly, and as I sat down to write this devotion, I thought about running back for another passage. I am a 9 on the enneagram, which if you’ve studied at all means that I am almost allergic to conflict. I want to be a peacemaker above almost all else, and so a psalm that encourages God to fight with who I’m fighting with feels foreign. A psalm that prays that God would allow others to be put to shame feels wrong. I’d like a refund.

And yet our lives are full of tension, aren’t they? For as much as we’d like peace at all times, we find a bunch of little wars. For as much as we’d love for everything to wrap up at the end of the episode, our lives are not little sitcoms. We are meant to wrestle, to struggle, to push through. And in these struggles this psalm reminds us well, that we rejoice in the Lord, exulting in his deliverance. It is God that makes sense of the tension in life. It is God that protects. It is God who saves. Let us rejoice and exalt in that deliverance!

PRAYER:

Dear God, when I feel that the world is against me and others are, either by their indifference or hostility, impediments in my way, grant that I may not sink into the quicksand of self-pity, but rather call out vigorously to you to be my Savior, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

(Eugene H. Peterson, Praying With the Psalms. Harper Collins. 1993.)

– Jason Freyer