BELIEVE THAT YOU WILL SEE THE GOODNESS OF THE LORD IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING

Publish date: 10/01/2004

[What, what would have become of me] had I not believed that I would see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living! 14 Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord. Psalms 27:13-14 AMP

There are many people who believe in fate—whatever will be, will be—but this is not a Bible principle. The Bible says that you have a hand in shaping your own destiny by the choices and decisions you make. You get what you expect to get.

David was a man who loved God with all his heart. He was a worshipper and a man of integrity. God called him, “a man after My own heart.” David wrote hundreds of Psalms—many of them were written in the middle of the toughest times of his life. David had been anointed king, but Saul was still on the throne. Saul, to whom David had been nothing but loyal, was insanely jealous of him and was trying to kill him, but David, out of respect for God and the king, would not touch a hair on the king’s head. David had not done anything wrong and yet he was forced to live in caves and run for his life. It must have been extremely difficult for him: mentally, physically, emotionally and in every way. The only thing that got him through everything was his faith in God and his relationship with God.

You could say that David was an optimist—he hoped in God, he believed that God was good, and he believed that he would see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living! David had a promise from God and he believed and expected that God would keep His promise. You have to be a person of faith to be an optimist and David had faith in God. In order to have faith in God, you have to first know what He has promised and then, secondly, you have to believe that He is faithful to keep his promises.

If you have faith, then you are not impatient. All the time you are waiting, you are hoping for and expecting the Lord, you are brave and of good courage and your heart is stout and enduring. If you have faith, no matter what you are going through right now, you have a confidence that God is coming through for you and that He will not be late. Even if you have lost something, if you have faith, no matter what you have lost, or what the devil has stolen from you, you have confidence that God will restore it to you.

David said, “What would have become of me had I not believed that I would see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living!” David knew that if he had given up hope, if he had believed that God had let him down, and if he had believed what the devil and his circumstances were telling him, that his life would have been destroyed and he never would have fulfilled the call and the plan of God for his life. Yes, God had made him a promise, but it was his confidence in God’s Word that brought him out of his difficulties into the blessing.

God is a good God and He has good things planned for you. Study God’s Word, find out what He has promised you, believe those promises, believe that you will see the Lord’s goodness here on earth, not just in heaven, and when you look back on your life you will be able to say, just like David, “I am so glad that I believed in God and that I trusted Him, because without Him I would never have made it. He has always come through for me!”