Trust That Rejoices

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 334, Trust That Rejoices.

Hear this word. Psalm 13, verse 5 — let it land:

"But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation."

Now before we get to that verse, you have to understand where it comes from. Psalm 13 opens at the bottom of a very dark well. David cries out four times: "How long, O Lord?" How long the silence? How long this pain? It is the cry of someone exhausted, someone who has been waiting, someone who is suffering — genuinely suffering. And God is not alarmed by that cry. He holds it. But then, in the middle of all that anguish, one single word arrives and turns the entire psalm on its head. In English we say "but." Small word. Enormous weight. "But I have trusted." Faith does not erase the pain. It does not pretend everything is fine when it isn't. What faith does is walk straight through the pain with its eyes fixed on God. That is not denial. That is courage.

And what does David choose to trust in? Not a feeling. Not a favorable outcome. He trusts in the hesed of God — and that is the heart of everything. Hesed, in Hebrew, is covenant love. It is not the kind of love that shows up when things are going well and vanishes when you stumble. It is the love that stays. It is the permanent character of God turned fully toward you — unshakeable, unconditional, unmoved by your circumstances. When everything around you feels unstable, this love does not shift. It never has. It never will.

Look closely at the verb: "I have trusted." In the original Hebrew, that tense reflects a firm decision made in the past that still holds in the present. David did not wait until he felt secure before trusting. He did not wait for his situation to improve. He chose trust as his anchor — and joy followed after, as a consequence, not as a condition. That matters enormously. Biblical joy is not the starting line. It is the fruit of a choice you make before you feel it.

And what is the object of that joy? "My heart shall rejoice in your salvation." For us, living on this side of the cross, that salvation has a name and a face. Jesus Christ. What David hoped for in the future, we have received in history. The cross is not a promise still waiting to be fulfilled — it is an already-accomplished reality. And an accomplished reality can hold up a rejoicing heart even on the hardest morning. Even when the circumstances have not changed one bit. David does not say the storm is over. He says his heart shall rejoice. This joy rises from the inside — from a certainty the world cannot give and cannot take away: God's love has not failed. It does not fail. It will not fail.

So today — here is your call: before breakfast, before you open your phone, before the day swallows you whole — stop. Two minutes. And say out loud, with your own voice: "Lord, I trust in your steadfast love — and my heart rejoices in your salvation." Let your own voice preach that truth to you. Because sometimes you need to hear yourself say what you believe, so that belief travels from your head all the way down into your heart.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.