Proud to praise God

"When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose words I praise-in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?" Psalm 56:3-4

Ok, that is the NIV version which is my normal go-to bible but I LOVE the Message for my study time as well. Here are those same verses in it:

"When I get really afraid I come to you in trust. I'm proud to praise God; fearless now, I trust in God. What can mere mortals do?"

Apparently David wrote this when he was captured by the Philistines. If you go back and read the entire chapter of Psalm 56, you can see that David really struggled during this time. He is angry, he feels defeated, he feels victimized. But at the end of the chapter he thanks God for delivering him from death (not from being captured, mind you) and says that God did everything He promised He would do. All he can offer God in that moment is his "thank offerings". Sheesh. I've been in many situations, none of them even close to being taken prisoner, and I don't know that I have ever thanked God in the exact moment of stress and anxiety. He is thanking God FROM prison, not when he has been delivered. But, even David had to work through a lot of emotions to get there.

Is it hard to praise God when we feel defeated? Have we ever sat in church and wanted to feel the 'right' emotions but we are just struggling? I think we have all been there. So,what do we do when we feel this way? We want to trust but we are not sure how. I think that is where this verse and many of the others that we will study come into actual practice. Sometimes when we do not know the words to say to God, we can take a verse like this and pray it to Him. This verse works perfectly because it is a prayer being called out to God in the middle of a fearful situation.

When I start feeling fearful, I often have to consciously stop myself and focus on one verse and pray it over and over. I promise you, there will be an unexplainable peace that falls on you when you do this. He wants us to rest in Him.
My presence will go with you and I will give you rest (Exodus 33:14) **thanks, Suze :)