The author of Psalm 86 cries out to God because there are literally men out to kill him! It reminds me of a scene from the movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” Indiana and his father find themselves tied back-to-back in chairs with the room burning down around them. They manage to move themselves into an empty fireplace, activating a switch that revolves them into a secret room, only to immediately revolve them back where they started, fire still blazing. Indy’s father wryly says to him, “Our situation has not improved.”

Have you ever felt like that? Like you keep coming back to the same kind of difficult situation in your life? You’ve managed to escape one bad relationship or circumstance, only to come full circle, right back to the thing you were trying to avoid.

Elisabeth had a heart for Bible translation. She met her future husband, Jim Elliot, while studying at Wheaton College. After marriage, they moved to Ecuador, bringing the gospel to its indigenous peoples. Three short years into their marriage, Jim was killed while trying to make contact with an unreached tribe. This was not the life that Elisabeth had imagined. How would she manage? How would she carry on? She could not change anything that had happened, nor alter her current situation. Years later, she would write, “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances!”

Her words echo the Apostle Paul’s. In the midst of his suffering, and in order that his readers might patiently endure their own suffering, he reminds the Church at Colosse of the unsurpassed privilege that is theirs, to have “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27 NIV). In Paul’s words, this “great mystery” — Christ in us — is something that the people of God have looked forward to for a long time. Let’s rewind the clock a few thousand years.

Moses stood on Mount Sinai, receiving the Ten Commandments from God. As he stood there God revealed the essence of His character to him:

The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” – (Exodus 34:6 NRSV)

This character is the basis of His covenant with Israel. Over the next several hundred years, they would repeatedly test His patience until He finally gave them over to their hearts’ desire: a life apart from His love and protection. He allowed them to be defeated, captured, and exiled to Babylon. Yet still, there in exile, He did not abandon them. Through the prophet Jeremiah, He promised to bring them back to their homeland. Not only that, He promised, “I will put My law within them, and I will write it on their hearts … I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me for all time, for their own good and the good of their children after them” (Jeremiah 31:33; 32:39 NRSV).

Scholars think that the author of Psalm 86 was reflecting upon these two passages when he wrote his psalm of lament (remember, men are trying to kill him). He prayed, “Give me an undivided heart to revere Your name” (v. 11), and he recalled to mind God’s self-revelation to Moses, “You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in mercy and truth” (v. 15). In the midst of his painful circumstances, he postured himself towards God: I am devoted to You (v. 2), I trust in You (v. 2), I cry to You (v. 3), I lift up my soul to You (v. 4), I give thanks to You (v. 12).

But notice also that the psalm does not end with a nice, pretty bow, tying everything together. There are still men who hate him, still those trying to kill him. So, what has changed? What has changed is that, after the Psalmist has looked around at the mess of his life, he has then refocused his gaze on the love of the Lord. And not just some abstract concept of God’s love, but God’s personal love for him (v. 13). He has invited God into the very depths of His being, to tie up all of the loose ends of his heart. He was, in essence, praying, “O Lord, how great is Your love! Help me to love You like that!” His situation may not have improved, but His experience of God’s love changed him right smack dab in the middle of it.

Do you find yourself in circumstances that you would not have chosen? Most of us will never know the distress that rises to the level of people actively seeking our destruction, but all of us will experience the corruption and brokenness of our world bearing down on us. Life interrupts our plans. It does not bend to our will, no matter how strongly we wish that it would. Perhaps you have come to a place where you are bargaining with God, “Please take this thing from me, and I will…” As many of us have discovered, God does not operate like that. The Psalmist knows this, too. In the midst of his pain, he turns his attention instead to the love of God.

This love is the bedrock of our faith as Christians. It is the Father’s love, which Jesus came to demonstrate, to invite us into. His prayer in John 17, right before He faced the cross, was that the Father might make us all one in Him, partakers of the same love that the Father and Son shared before the foundation of the world. This eternal love, this unity, is what Jesus is painting a picture of when, just a few chapters earlier, He tells His disciples to abide in Him, the same way that branches of a tree abide in the tree itself. We are invited into the love of God. Into unity with Him. Into the joy of fellowship with the One who took our pain into Himself. And this fellowship can weather every circumstance.

Rather than trying to claw your way out of your current circumstances, turn your attention to meditating on the goodness and faithfulness of the Lord in the midst of everything you are going through. How can the reality of Christ in you change your perspective about the things in your life that you would not have chosen yourself? The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.

AN OPEN INVITATION

You can receive the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ by praying something like the following:

Dear God, I know I am a sinner. I need Your forgiveness and grace. I believe that Christ paid the penalty for my sin, and He died in my place, and He rose from the dead. I invite Jesus Christ to come into my life as Savior. Thank You for saving me from my sin and making me Your child. Help me to grow and learn how to serve You. Amen.