Psalm 32:7-9 - April 1, 2009

Ps 32:7-9 "You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. 9 Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you." NIV

This passage is a dialogue between David and the Lord. David is declaring his confidence in the Lord and the Lord is responding as a Father to a son speaking counsels of wisdom and warning. David is secure in the knowledge of who the Lord is to him. This is something that every believer must reach for. Do we know who God is to us!? In this moment of need David knows the Lord as his hiding place, and his protection from trouble.
David shares with us a candid glimpse into a deeper part of his walk with God through this passage that is worth noting. The hiding place that David has in the Lord and the protection that David finds in him is flowing out of his heart of worship. You “surround me with songs of deliverance,” is the testimony of his praise. This passage doesn’t fully express the principle it contains until we join it with other statements made in the psalms by other authors. Ps 42:8 states, “at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.” This psalmist experienced a consistent pattern of the Lord placing a song in his spirit that rose back up to the Lord as prayer. When considered together these two passages paint a picture of the Lord ministering to his saints through songs that come from the heavenly realms into the heart of the psalmist to accomplish a supernatural purpose. For David it is a song of deliverance, for the psalmist of Psalm 42 it is a prayer back unto the Lord. Each of these is an expression of heavenly impartation producing an earthly response in and through the heart of the servant of God.
After inserting a brief prophetic glimpse into songs of deliverance David shifts gears into a prophetic declaration back to himself and the reader. This psalm is so diverse as it begins with a cry of repentance, moves into a reflection on the hiding place that is in the Lord, teases us with a glimpse into the mystical nature of a song of deliverance and then from this place of worship and warfare the psalm shifts suddenly into a prophetic declaration. This entire psalm seems to be such a powerful example of the free-flowing nature of the Holy Spirit, as it allows us to see what it is to write or sing by the Spirit instead of from an intellectual sense of form and order. Each one of us would be greatly helped to learn how to relax in the presence of the Lord and allow him to lead our thoughts with such liberty. It is this freedom that gives David the ability to respond to the dramatic shifts that the Holy Spirit chooses to introduce. If he was writing from his head instead of from his heart then this psalm would most likely have become paralyzed in form and never reached the place of releasing such a dramatic word from the Lord as follows in the next verses.
The Holy Spirit begins to speak into David’s heart regarding God’s desire to lead and guide. What is powerfully communicated in these next verses is that it is the Lord’s desire to lead and instruct us. We do not have to beg Him to show us His will or lead us in His way. The Lord cautions David and his listeners, “Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled…” The implication of this statement is that God would rather lead us with His words than compel us through circumstances as a result of our dullness of hearing or stubbornness of heart. God offers to instruct us, teach us in the way we should go, counsel us and watch over us. Lord please open our ears and teach us how to listen.