My heart says of you, "Seek his face!"
Your face, LORD, I will seek.
9 Do not hide your face from me,
do not turn your servant away in anger;
you have been my helper.
Do not reject me or forsake me,
O God my Savior. Psalms27:7-8
In the next couple of verses David moves from positive confident faith expression to a tone that sounds a little fearful and insecure and is more of a plea than a dogmatic statement of faith. The change is so abrupt that some commentators speculate that this is actually a separate psalm.
I think there is a better way to resolve the change in tone...
When faith is one hundred percent certain, then it is fact and not faith. Faith is always a leap into trust. As David faces his circumstances there are two issues: His knowledge and experience of God on the one hand and the challenge of his circumstances on the other.
He has discovered that God is good and he remembers that God has been faithful in the past, but now he is faced with a set of circumstances that put that to the test. This is the divide that faith must bridge. David bridges the gap with _relational_ faith.
Faith is not a rational exercise. It is not simply stoically believing in my idea of God. That is a mere mental exercise and runs the danger of being idolatry. David's belief in God means that he reaches out to his God. Real faith is not a rational determined cognitive belief in a set of principles. Faith is not in the head. Real faith is to reach out in trusting _relationship_.
For David faith means reaching the end of his own abilities and seeking God's face, asking for help.
So the psalm takes on a desperate tone.
David sounds a little like the dad of the demon-possessed boy who cried out to Jesus: "Lord I believe, help my unbelief."
Like the dad, David takes the problem to God.
(We'll unpack this some more tomorrow...)
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
