"The Plunge"

"But I have trusted in Thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in Thy salvation." (Psalms 13:5) You have no doubt heard the term, "he threw himself on the mercy of the court"; well here we have something that speaks about throwing himself on the mercy of God. It's this word "trusted" that David uses here, which is a plunge of surrender; a word that means to be secure, and to fear nothing for oneself. This is the perfect example of what it means to learn how to drown before God! David is confident that God will rescue him, because he has trusted God before, and He has never let him down. What a contrast we have between this verse and the beginning of this Psalm; which speaks mightily of the power of prayer, and how things become different when we take it to the Lord in prayer. Prayer does change things; and if nothing else, it draws us closer to God, which makes those things that were troubling us seem miles away. Sweet Surrender, that's what we are talking about here. It is a willingness to let go and let God have full reign in our life; at all cost!!! This is something that requires full and complete trust in God, that His loving kindness towards us will protect us, and that He will do for us what is best in His eyes, not in ours. This is something that I think is very important to our ability to trust God in all things: we must be willing to surrender everything to Him; including our very life! If the most important thing that we have in God is eternal life in Him, then make that the most important thing in us! Jesus said, speaking to His disciples in Matthew 16:24-26, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" He really is talking about all of our life when He is speaking about life; that means the existence of life itself, which is the breath of life; meaning this life that we have in common with this world. To think about this in another light; in order to hold unto something, we must also have additional items in order to sustain that which we hold onto, and then those items will need to be provided for, and so on and so on; and pretty soon, you really have not given up anything, but instead, you have found yourself saving all that you can. If we have surrendered everything to Him, including life itself, then there is nothing that can begin to challenge our trust in Him; because that which we are holding onto is His salvation given to us; and nothing, absolutely nothing can take that away...