Singing Psalm 61 you learn the hope behind taking it higher
- Aug 12, 2022
- 11 min read
Updated: May 28
Singing Psalm 61 you ponder what taking it higher means when it all depends on you
The concept of taking it higher can be loaded with pressure, angst, and depression over the very real prospect of failure when you are where the buck stops. If it all depends on you and you fail, there is no hope. You mark yourself a failure. You paste on a confidence front just to go on. But it is torture inside.
You might shut down when you are misunderstood rather than work to clarify or eat when you’re sad rather than cry out for comfort.
Self-preoccupation and anxiety will threaten to choke out your heart when taking it higher depends on you in the midst of trials, pain, and loss.
Disappointment, discouragement, and the slow drip draining of your vitality will describe your moments and days at even the thought of taking it higher when it depends on you.
When it all depends on you, insecurity prevails since, if you are honest when you look within, you can see that your life is fragile and tenuous. Rest and sleep evade you as you take on a load you were not created to carry.
When it comes to children or anyone you are caring for, you have a choice. Rely on yourself which means your mood dictates how you communicate, or rely on God asking specifically for him to help them each day. Depending on yourself, you might find that though you desire taking it higher, you alternate between being emotionally labile or emotionally stunted.
You might find that your emotions are either whipping you around mercilessly or stopping you up so that you are unable to feel with others appropriately. The constructive displeasure of mercy where sorrow restores a heart of love even in the face of torment can override anger’s hot impulse to lash out in words or in actions.
Emotions are a gift from God to use whenever it makes sense as tools in your hand that you control, not to be controlled by them.
Deciding what to think, feel, and do whether life is going as you wish or you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death is a matter of collaboration with Jesus.
How can you cry out to God genuinely unless you are aware of what you are thinking or feeling or have some understanding of the motives underneath what you do? This is not something you manufacture, but he gently dislodges your masks one-by-one and gives you sincerity as you seek his face.
Instead of going it on your own, you can attach yourself to the one who is higher than you, who knows what it means to live life to the full while at the same time being a man of sorrows. He relinquished his supreme power to become lower than the angels so that you could fathom a union with him and now has all authority in heaven and on earth that your hope would be secured.
Singing Psalm 61 you ponder what taking it higher means when it all depends on the one who is higher than you
“There is a lot you can do to make a difference after you have prayed. But there is really nothing you can do to make a difference until you have prayed.” ~ H.B. Charles Jr.
If it all depends, not on you, but on the one who cares for you, who is higher than you, and who never fails, then when you fail, you know that it is part of his higher purpose.
Maybe you learn something that you use to succeed later. Maybe you learn compassion for others when you feel the steely, cold knife of conviction pierce your conscience as you reflect on a time when you rejected another and had no pity.
Aware of the battle for your emotions, you cry out to him for help to manage each one, to feel each one richly, to see how it was given, tailor-made to you for his higher purpose, a purpose that you might not ever know.
You trust that he knows when your eyes are on him, the one who is higher than you. He brings about the victory at just the right time as you trust him in your ongoing battles.
“The minute you start seeing your obstacles as things that are made for you, to give you what you need, then life starts to get fun, right? You start surfing on top of your problems instead of living underneath them,” Ashton Kutcher said of his recent illness that affected his ability to walk, see, and hear.
What you know, remember, or experience takes on a lesser significance when you compare them to who you know, who you remember, and with whom you experience each moment.
Even waiting takes on new meaning as it is a huge component of the Lord’s higher purpose. What do you think and who do you think about as you wait at home, in line, or in traffic? Asking the one who is higher than you for help while you wait is a large part of taking it higher. When this practice is continual, moment-by-moment and day-by-day, the Lord transports you from drowning in your anger or anxiety to taking it higher in hope and endurance.
The Lord helps you plan for times to be present mentally and emotionally for others. He helps you think about the time needed to prepare meals, to get laundry done, or to do that dreaded task at work.
He gave you a conscience so you can know when you are putting things before people, or putting people before God. That little tug on your heart clues you in to lay before him all that you are thinking, feeling, and doing, so that he can help you put it all in order.
In fact, what if many of the things called disorders are actually your conscience reminding you to lay everything before the one who is higher than you? What if he made you that way so that you actually are in good order when you aren’t pursuing independence but rather are dependent on him?
Maybe the disorder is in thinking that you need to be independent and able to function on your own without the Lord’s help or without anyone’s help. What if your idea of taking it higher is exactly the opposite of what is true? What if what seems upside down is actually right side up? What if taking it higher is lowering yourself to become poor in spirit, coming to Jesus to shoulder your burden and give you rest?
Singing Psalm 61 helps you to consider these questions. Instead of hiding from the Lord, you can run to him and hide taking shelter under his wings from your anger or fear.
Jesus often asked people, “What do you want?” or “What do you want me to do for you?” If what you want is to see him, be close to him, especially if it is hidden from the view of others so that it is not a matter of position or prestige you are after, but only to be with him, he will not refuse you!
The times that you lose sight of the one who is higher than you will become fewer and farther between. You find that even when you fall, he’s the one who picks you back up, dusts you off, and leads you on the path where you should go.
Your vows in your committed covenant relationship to the triune God were paid at the cross. Your inheritance has been secured by Jesus. Your allegiance to him is unrivaled. You worship him together with those who also love him and revere him with undivided devotion. What building ever stood whose stones were disconnected?
“For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” ~ Ephesians 2:18-22
“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” ~ 1 Peter 2:4-5
When you consider that he is taking it higher for each one of his people, moment-by-moment, each and every day, you stand in awe of his infinite care and ability.
You realize he is not just higher than you, he is so much higher than you that he is other than you. You fall down and worship him because of his majesty and you wonder at it all. You are taking it higher in amazement and wonder at him, the great, matchless, triune God who you can only begin to know and will be ever captivated by as you will be learning him for all eternity.
You look up and enjoy the clouds. Maybe you even imagine the type of cloud on which the Lord Jesus will be riding when he comes to take you home.
“Hear my cry, O God,
listen to my prayer;
from the end of the earth I call to you
when my heart is faint.
Lead me to the rock
that is higher than I,
for you have been my refuge,
a strong tower against the enemy.
“Let me dwell in your tent forever!
Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings! Selah
For you, O God, have heard my vows;
you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name.” ~ Psalm 61:1-5
August 9-12, 2022
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Heart ♥️ reflection
March 2, 2025
“But you who held fast to the LORD your God are all alive today. See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?” ~ Deuteronomy 4:4-7
Question: Does God expect only outward obedience to his word or does he require that I also engage with him in reasoning out what he says?
Heart reflection: Perfect trust brings about simple obedience that settles it for creatures to obey their perfect creator. But once that trust is broken, your heart becomes separated from God’s. It becomes necessary for you to reason together with your creator what is to be done about it given who God is and who you are. Jesus wants you to understand why he says what he says, that his motives, commands, and their outworkings are pure and out of his deep and abiding love and care for you. Although you are expected to obey him whether or not you understand the whys*, when he cleans the inside of the cup and dish, the outside will be clean also. When he has your heart, he will have your obedience as well. You might think to obey, perhaps to avoid negative consequences. But unless you give him your heart, any outward obedience is temporary at best. God would not call that true friendship any more than you would. Since God is not looking for mere outward obedience but looks for what’s underneath it at the heart, he wants you engaged in obeying him from the heart. When asked, Jesus wants you to be able to give reasons for why you can trust him. And as you give them, it will be clear to those questioning that you are captivated both by his beauty and by the beauty of his commands.
“Lead me to the rock that is higher than I,
For You‘ve always been a refuge for me,
A tower of strength from each enemy.
O let me forever in Your tent abide,
And under Your sheltering wings let me hide. Selah” ~ Psalm 61:2b-4
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The Psalms—Q&A
“In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” ~ John 14:2
How does the Lord Jesus leading me to sing Psalm 61 help me grow in my affection for God and in my connection with others?
“O let me forever in Your tent abide,
And under Your sheltering wings let me hide.” ~ Psalm 61:4
Your heart’s understanding of who God is can go from perceiving him as quite fuzzy, distant, uninvolved, and irrelevant in your life as an almost unreal figment of your imagination to holding him as the most clear, near and especially dear, fully present friend and confidante as three of the most real persons that surely exist as one God in the Father, the Son who is the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, whom you live with now and long to live with forever. Singing Psalm 61 can be instrumental in bringing that change about.
I suppose when God first called you to himself and revealed himself to you, he did it in such a way that you grew to desire to know him more and more each day. He revealed himself to you by his word and gave the gift of faith with heart roots the size of a mustard seed that he would fortify with his love to make it like a full and giving tree much like the children’s book by that name which poignantly aligns in some ways with your story. “Birds” can perch in your branches made strong by Jesus to whom you continually point them. In imitating the character of your redeemer, you find ways to volunteer your limbs to be useful to others in whatever way you could. By his grace, you consider the needs of others before your own and become a cheerful giver because you abide in Jesus, the only lasting place of rest for the weary.
Whatever you presumably lost here, you volunteered it trusting that as you care for others, the Lord cared, cares, and will care for you and will surely restore you when he comes again to restore all things. I suppose this is what Jesus meant when he said that when you lose your life, you are actually saving it for eternity. And in eternity there is no place prepared for self-savers, but for only those whom Jesus saved, saves, and is saving. He is most definitely preparing a place for his people to hide in him through his judgment of the world to always be with him where he is.
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” ~ John 15:4
What is the best desire you can have?
To abide in Jesus who leads you to all that is truly and unfadingly good. The fruit you bear in him will not rot but only grow sweeter with time.
“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” ~ John 15:15
What is God’s biggest desire for you?
To delight in being your best friend who enables you to delight in becoming his forever friend right back. For your trust is in this that his sure protection, provision, and presence culminates.
What life can devolve into when you lose sight of your friendship with God: You look at what you have and desire, whether much or little, compare them, and a gnawing uncertainty comes over you about whether they’re right, enough, or impressive. You make your possessions and appetites unspoken statements about what, if anything, you are worth.
And with a friendship with God ever before your eyes: You view what you have and want as gifts from God. You are thankful to him, filled with joy that he would think of you, bless you with anything whether much or little, happy for whatever he has chosen to give to others, and more, that he would be with you always and cherish you so that you can hide yourself in him. Your possessions and desires are unhidden statements about God‘s generosity and his personal care for you that perfectly suit you. In him, you are secure enough to share in ways that honor God whether out of your poverty or abundance.
“Before God he’ll sit, enthroned he”ll endure;
Give your love and truth to make him secure.” ~ Psalm 61:7
Ask Mary Magdalene (the one who clung to Jesus as her best friend and who embraced his mercy that she knew she desperately needed): How did having to wait for God’s deliverance teach you to trust him?
Engage and grow together!
“Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another.” ~ Proverbs 27:17
May 29, 2026
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