experiencing grace

I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love,

because you have seen my affliction;

you have known the distress of my soul,

and you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy;

you have set my feet in a broad place.

Psalm 31:7-8

David’s praise is rooted in an appreciative experience of the grace (the steadfast love) of God. That grace was known in at least four confirming moments as David reflects on God’s care. And those four moments are also known for Christians in the work of Jesus.

• God sees our affliction. He knows when, where, and why we are hurting and He remedies it in grace. Jesus had compassion on us, while we were yet sinners, to die for us and deliver us from our affliction.
• God knows our deep, personal distress. David described it as “distress of the soul”. And the fact that God KNOWS we hurt deeply, both when we are sinned against and when we sin, should provide comfort to us. Our pain is never suffered solo. Jesus, as the Man of Sorrows, is also acquainted with grief that comes from living in a broken world. He suffered as well. He suffered well (something we rarely do). He knows our soul’s distress.
• God keeps our enemies at bay. David was not delivered over to those who sought his demise. And in Jesus, death and hell, and all of Satan’s strategies to destroy, are completely and competently defeated! We are led in a victory procession in Jesus’ salvation of our souls, with Christ, our conquering hero at the head of the parade! Our ultimate enemy is humiliated forever.
• God gives new freedom. David saw himself living in a broad, free, wide-open space of grace through the work of the God Who delivered him. And how much more freedom we now have in Jesus! If the Son sets us free, we are free indeed! …free to roam through golden fields of grace from horizon to horizon! …free to live beyond the confining restrictions of our narrow, sin-restricted, hell-locked former lives! …free to live now with an eternal periphery everywhere we look!