Early this morning I was once again dealing with an area of my life that has been a struggle over the years. As I lay in bed the enemy came in full force with condemnation for my failure. In truth, the issue isn’t a big one but even a little one in the hands of an unrelenting enemy can destroy your joy. His voice condemning your actions, your sin, can override that still small voice that brings a different message. This morning I wasn’t hearing that voice at all. But God is faithful!

I finally gave up battling and went out on the patio for my morning time with the Lord in hopes that I could find some answers in His Word. I should not have been surprised when He led me to Psalm 86. If you will allow me to take some liberty with His Word I will share what His still small voice told me this morning in the voice of David for He, like me, was Poor and Needy. I won’t put the entire Psalm in here but I encourage you to read it and let David show you what he showed me this morning.

As I began to read, while still troubled by what I was dealing with (and certainly not for the first time), I heard my heart respond to what David was saying. Yes, he cried out to God that he was poor and needy, but what followed showed me the way he dealt with his condition:

• I cry unto thee daily…
• I lift up my soul… 
• I will call upon thee…
• I will walk in thy truth…
• I will praise thee…
• I will glorify thy name…

Those six, simple realities of David’s speak volumes to us as we deal with those sins, those failures in our life that the enemy tries to bring up to overwhelm us. We know that God has forgiven us but the enemy knows just which buttons to push and when to push them that will pierce our soul. But in these words of David we see why God said that he was a man after His own heart. What I saw this morning really lifted me up. What I saw in David’s Psalm was the reason that he was able to kneel  before God and make these six commitments. It was because of what he knew to be true that he could turn from his need and look to his God:

• For thou, Lord, art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy…
• Thou wilt answer me…
• Thou art great…
• Thou art God alone…
• Great is thy mercy…
• You are a God full of compassion, gracious, land longsuffering…

And in these six things David laid out far more than I needed this morning to put down the accusation and incrimination the enemy was throwing at me. David made so simple what I had allowed the enemy to complicate. “Lord, I know that You are great and I know that because of Your mercy you will answer me. What you say I will do.” But even more important was the reason David could say that:

• Because, thou O Lord, hast helped me and comforted me…

David had a history with God and that is what he called upon in his time of being poor and needy. He understood God’s heart and that is the reason he was a man after it. That’s what I needed to remember this morning, that God is full of mercy and grace. He is for me and not against me, He is not down on me but only waits for me to cry out so He can lift me up.

Mercy and grace! Oh how we allow the shrill voice of the enemy to drown out the still small voice that wants to remind us that God’s mercy and grace are limitless. I love what C. H. Spurgeon said: You can no more exhaust the mercy and the grace of God than a minnow can drink the entire Atlantic Ocean. And that mercy and grace is there for us if we will just be like David and stand ready to let God teach us and then walk in His way, simply doing what He says to do. We each have a history with God, we can’t let the enemy cloud our memory.

This morning He told me to cease listening to the enemy’s voice… because the enemy had nothing to talk about!