Psalm 71:14-24
The second half of this psalm turns from plea to praise, or more accurately, to the promise of public praise:
But I will hope continually
Psalm 71:14-16
and will praise You yet more and more.
My mouth will tell of Your righteous acts,
of Your deeds of salvation all the day,
for their number is past my knowledge.
With the mighty deeds of the Lord GOD I will come;
I will remind them of Your righteousness, Yours alone.
I envision a soldier in a foxhole under a barrage of artillery desperately praying to survive the night and promising to serve the Lord thereafter. My guess is that such “foxhole commitments” number in the thousands, if not millions. (As the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes…) But I wonder about the rate of follow-through; that is, what percentage of those who “make a deal” with God under stress go on to fulfill their half of the bargain? The percentage is certainly not zero, but neither is it 100.
My guess — and it is only a guess — is that the answer is far closer to zero than 100. I base that only on observation of human nature and of myself. I have never been in combat, but I am pretty sure that I have nonetheless bargained with God along the lines of, “If You save me from X, then I’ll do Y.” The problem is that I have conveniently forgotten all those commitments and am only “pretty sure” that I might have made them…
All of that goes to say that we ought not forget to return praise and thanksgiving to God for all the wondrous things He does as He pours out His steadfast love on us. He deserves such praise regardless of whether we vow to give it or not. So as we read this psalm together, with its promises of praise, take the opportunity to actually follow through and praise the Lord, right here, right now.
It’s clear that the psalmist will be speaking out for the Lord. Will I? Will you?
John, your reference to a “foxhole commitment” brought back from memory a similar foxhole situation for me, although it was not from a combat situation. My foxhole prayer was during my senior year in college where I was struggling with a class and near failing it. If I failed this class I wouldn’t graduate. During these years of my life I did not know Jesus, didn’t regularly attend a Church and really didn’t want anything to do with religion. But I was desperate to graduate from college. So I went to a Roman Catholic Church and attended an afternoon Mass. I went to a Catholic Church because I had been raised Catholic and was familiar with the service. There I prayed for help to pass the class I was struggling with. God heard my prayer, I did pass the class.
I do not remember if I ever thanked God (until a lot later!) for His grace to pass that class. I don’t recall if I made a bargain with God during that prayer. But God certainly held up His side of the prayer and I am truly grateful.
It is so easy to take God’s abundant blessings for granted. Good advice, John, to take the time right here, right now to give thanks and praise God for His abundant love for us.
Thanks for that personal account, Bruce. I love to hear those personal stories – new perspectives applying Scripture to our everyday lives.
I, too, had a “foxhole conversion”, this one in Vietnam, but in a small church/chapel, not a foxhole. I will leave out the whole of the story; only the ending has application here. Suffice to say that as a result of an “incident” I told God what I planned to do and pretty much suggested what I expected from Him. You already know the outcome – God did not work according to my plans! It would be another six years of me mostly living up to my end of the plan and Him “doing His own thing”, until He finally got to me with His plan, that I needed to make Him the Lord of my life and simply serve Him according to His grace given to me. Not surprisingly, I like His plan much better. Don’t make deals with God. Seek, ask, pray, but keep your plans to yourself!!