Singing Psalm 71 you stay the course
Updated: Aug 7
Singing Psalm 71 you stay the course through community
Singing Psalm 71 brings you to the importance of your connection with the Lord and with his the church of which you are a member. You are confronted with what you think about God, yourself, and others. When you encounter those who hurt you, singing Psalm 71 helps you stay the course thankful for the Lord making a way in his church for you to fit into society without being of it.
Do you think of going to church as a stressor that is too much to bear when you feel weak? Or do you think of going to church as a place you can go to be strengthened in the Lord when you are distressed and weak, encouraged to stay the course?
Your answer says something about the communication between you, the Lord, and those at your church. When you and those with whom you congregate make their primary business something other than praising the Lord, rather than helping one another find strength in the Lord, you and they become more distressed and weak making it difficult to stay the course.
Singing Psalm 71 you stay the course through suffering
Remember the Lord Jesus walking through hostile crowds. His sense of confidence in his father’s presence never wavered. Even when he took the sin of his people on himself so that his people would be forever united to his father and underwent separation from him unto death, he completed the job knowing that he would rise and bring about the death of death.
He was willing to suffer bodily but even more to suffer through the separation from his father for a time, confident of the good his staying the course would bring about. He knew that he would be bringing salvation to his people, and those who sought to do him wrong would be humbled and ashamed.
His father rescued him from his suffering through death. Those who follow Jesus can ask for and be confident of receiving the father’s ear and rescue throughout their lives and salvation through death. Despite past, present, and future sins, all who trust Jesus he will lead in the way everlasting.
In the face of threats, it helps to recall that the Lord has sustained you through birth and through your youth. The same Lord who brought you from conception through birth to where you are now is the same Lord who will bring you from where you are now to where he wants you to go in spite of opposition.
Built into his plan, he wants you to confide in him, to ask him to help and guide you, to invite him, to have a relationship with him. God promises to help you stay the course through all your responsibilities for the rest of your life.
He doesn’t choose to base his way of relating to us solely on his power but rather on his compassion and steadfast love. He uses his power together with his love to move you in heart, soul, mind and strength, to love him and to love your neighbor not only as yourself but more than yourself following Jesus‘s example who laid down his life.
Yet the grave could not hold him. All who trust him will follow him through the grave to live forever with him. He doesn’t just help you cradle to grave. He helped you from conception, through birth, through life, and will help you through death, to life eternal, making his home with you as one of his people, and along the way, taking away your loneliness.
He makes his presence felt. He satisfies completely. He is not a consolation prize you settle for if you were counting on love from somewhere else that didn’t pan out. He is your all in all and is with you in all of the things that he has prepared in advance for you to do.
Whenever your feelings disagree, you cry out to him and patiently wait for him to make himself known to you trusting that he never left you and never will leave you no matter what you feel at any given moment. You are learning to trust in him and his promises, and not in your feelings, as strong and as useful as they may be at times.
Singing Psalm 71 you stay the course through affection
How can you praise the Lord from your heart unless you make it a point to know him and to be emotionally connected to him? He gave us his word to take in all that he has revealed of himself for this very purpose—a lamp unto your feet, a light onto your path.
He has made it easy for you to know him and draw near to him. He provided a way for you to map your individual story and understand how it fits in his all-encompassing epic rescue story.
If a child begins singing the psalms when they first can speak, they will unconsciously incorporate the emotional tools they need to navigate through life in a godly way. If instead you memorized songs from the radio in your youth and were taught how to think about life and relationships in skewed and warped ways, praise him for redirecting your focus from placing people on the throne of your heart where only God belongs.
Singing seems to tap into needs that are preverbal. After singing the psalms over and over again, you begin to realize how God is and how you are and how desperately you need him for each breath and each step you take.
As you sing, the triune God and his kingdom transcend within you as more real than what can be seen which is temporary. That he is your rock, your dwelling place, your constant safe resort is more than just a verse in a song. He is your new reality by faith, which is unseen and eternal.
You stay the course as you perceive him more and more clearly. He takes you higher than those on drugs can only dream about. And he sustains it. Since he perfectly understands you, he is able to give you precisely what you need when you most need it. Since he perfectly loves you, he is willing to give you precisely what you need when you most need it.
People cause other people to suffer to harm them and think God has forsaken their victims because he lets them suffer. As you get older, you might feel forsaken as your body gives way to weakness and wrinkles. But He uses suffering as his chisel until you are who he created you to be. He dazzles.
Neither politics nor any human entity can hold a candle to the brilliance of his ability to bring good out of evil, to transform our perishable, mortal bodies to imperishable, immortal bodies in which he turns our mourning into dancing. “O God, who is like you?”
His word gets into you and transforms your mind and heart giving understanding to the simple. He will joyfully sing over you and lead you to joyfully sing about him and to him.
“The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.” ~ Zephaniah 3:17
He moves you from unhinged chaos to peaceful order. He leads you from not knowing why you do what you do to clear intentions. He gives you the gift of repentance so that you can make needed changes to stay the course in both heart and behavior.
Singing psalms trains your mind toward a grateful satisfaction in and an affection for God. It inoculates your thoughts against desiring mere self-interest pursuits. It corrects and convicts you of selfishness when you fail to stay the course. It paints a pleasant vision for you of the fruits of repentance that both redirects and lights your path.
Singing Psalm 71 with your mind and heart engaged and meditating on God’s word in song will take you higher than the heights that you now see as you go through ups and downs. You have hope that the Lord will be present with you even as you age so you can make his strength and power to forgive known to the next generation.
God‘s faithfulness does not mean that you will not have trouble. Jesus promises that you will. His faithfulness means that he does not forget you in the trouble he brings you but is with you in it. He brings you low and lifts you up in due time. He brings you out of the miry pit. You can take heart that along with Jesus, as he cares for you and carries you, you also will stay the course and overcome the world.
“Though in the past you made me see
Much trouble and distress,
You will revive and raise me up
From earth’s enclosing depths.
Increase my honor, turn again
To give me peace and rest.
My God, with harps I’ll praise and sing
About your faithfulness.”~ Psalm 71:20-22
September 16-24, 2022
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Heart ♥️ reflection
April 2, 2025
As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” ~ Luke 11:27-28
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” ~ Ephesians 2:8-9
“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” ~ Ephesians 6:13
Question: Which should be more sought after: honor from accomplishments or nourishment for the soul?
Heart reflection: Jesus clearly ranks those whose souls are nourished by God’s word as blessed over even the one who gave birth to and nourished him. Mary was a humble woman who gave glory to God as his servant created and blessed for good works in Jesus, one of which she accomplished by giving birth to him. She was never in competition with God nor did she consider herself equal to God. Mary would not approve of those who place her on his level. She didn’t set out to become a manufactured god but rather was given the gift not to do this in her heart. It was this lowliness that made her suitable for her role. Jesus, Mary’s son, is Mary’s Lord. This supernatural relational duality can be compared to when David said, “The LORD says to my Lord…” making the Son of David, David’s Lord. It’s those who proudly sing Mary’s praises and boast in her accomplishments completely unsolicited and unwarranted by her that need to take to heart this warning from Jesus: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” God will have no other gods before him, opposing the proud and giving grace to the humble. Lot’s wife serves as a warning to pay close attention to what or who draws you and impresses you. What or who would take the place of God in your heart? She went through the religious motions but was turned into a pillar of salt by looking back. Perhaps she was longing for the prestigious city life and all the glitter and praise over human accomplishments that inevitably accompanied that life. Let’s choose instead to strategically take up the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, with a spirit of gentleness. Watch and pray to remain ready from your youth through to your old age to cut through every deception you encounter with God’s truth spoken in his love.
“O God I have been taught by You
From early days of youth;
And all the wonders you have done
I still declare as truth.” ~ Psalm 71:17
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The Psalms—Q&A
“For God, Your righteousness extends
Beyond the heights we view;
And You have done such wondrous things,
O God, who is like You?” ~ Psalm 71:19
How does the Lord Jesus leading me to sing Psalm 71 help me grow in my affection for God and in my connection with others?
Singing Psalm 71 covers the full span of life from youth to when I’m old and gray (now).
Listening and singing along to music as a young girl led to being ashamed. It is a wondrous thing to be taught to trust the Lord by singing the psalms. He redeemed my singing and rescued me from my shame!
“I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD.” ~ Hosea 2:20
“In You, O LORD, I put my trust;
Ashamed, let me not be.
O save me in Your righteousness;
Give ear, and rescue me.” ~ Psalm 71:1-2
Seeking rest, relaxation, and a reset at the shore for a couple of days I recall how I did not trust God in my youth and my faithfulness has grown ever so slowly. Yet the Lord Jesus, “my rock and fort,” always faithful, suffered for me, died in my place, then rose so that I would one day also. “My constant safe resort,” he still rocks me to sleep in his arms as his child by the ever faithful, gentle soothing roar of his ocean waves.
Most wondrous is how God sees his people, whatever their age, the way we see little children. There is a natural affinity and affection for the earnestness of a little one running on the sand as fast as she can to catch a bird in flight. To think that the Lord still looks at me that way is indeed wondrous.
You are precious to him like that, the apple of his eye. And he is your hope.
“Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.” ~ Isaiah 40:30-31
By waiting for Jesus as your Lord who is worth waiting for, no longer jaded, you will age backwards spiritually, childlike and dependent, as he restores hope in you that you are his and precious to him.*
“So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven,” ~ Matthew 10:32
When you are weary and burdened, Jesus has us come to him for what? For what we need most. And what is that? Is it strength? Wisdom? Provisions? Protection? To be liked? To be understood? For good things to think, say, and do? Yes to all of these.
But what we need most is what Jesus says to come to him for. Rest. Resting in Jesus is the foundation to all of life from which all the other good things that we must come to him for. If rest sounds boring to you, equate it to the wholeness and flourishing of peace that passes understanding. Rest is the greatest need you have and only Jesus can give it to you. In everything you do, God‘s strength and power flow from your rest in Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
“And even when I’m old and gray,
O God, forsake me not,
Until your strength and pow’r I have
Each generation taught.” ~ Psalm 71:18
It is even possible to age backwards physically if, by lack of movement or overuse, you’ve aged beyond your years. You can learn to move your body in ways that are synchronized with God’s design for the body to heal itself until he calls you home.
Ask Hosea who embraced God‘s faithfulness while in the throes of life with an unfaithful wife: 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
August 7, 2026
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