My cousin Brad said from the pulpit of his stage once that King David was one of the greatest songwriters ever, and far be it from me to contradict his learned opinion. King David has an awesome style in his Psalms of searching the Lord’s mercy for His benevolence in what ever ailed him. His songs are dialogues with the Lord as ours should also be.

Many of King David’s Psalms express the same level of anxiety and frustration over the enemies that hound us. In this third Psalm, God is questioned about how many enemies are there against the faithful? Many are rising up against me saying, “there is no help for you from your God.” We often read this and determine that the enemies are people, its easiest to see the enemies as real entities.

Our enemies also attack us in emotional, cerebral and spiritual ways. These attacks are just as debilitating and can require as much recovery as physical molestations. We are battered and broken by depression, frustration, broken lives and hearts. We teeter ever closer to our brink, threatened by circumstances that take our breath away.

My inspiration seeds are from songs of Christians bands, Thousand Foot Krutch and Red. Their songs imitate the style of King David, as one band writes how it feels to be battered by the everyday anomalies. “This how it feels when I ignore the words You spoke to me and this is where I lose myself when I am running away from You. This is who I am when I don’t know myself anymore and this is what I choose when it’s all left up to me.” Think about these statements and let me know if the moral imperatives in your life reflect these statements.

Red continues in their second verse, when you read this, emphasize the italicized words. “This is how it looks when I am standing on the edge. This is how I break apart when I finally hit the ground. This is how it hurts when I pretend I don’t feel any pain. This is how I disappear when I throw myself away. When you look at yourself in the mirror please recognize THIS is who you are (on the outside and on the inside).

Sometimes that realization is suffocating enough, we stand, afraid to move, trapped in our own isolation. Thousand Foot Krutch illustrates how our inclination is to want to get away from the pressures that mesmerize us and drives us from our comfort zones. The lyrics continue to highlight how many times it is our own thought process that complicates our situation far more then it needs. .

In that third Psalm, King David is quick to the realization that the only possible answer is to turn to God in any and all situations. “But You, O Lord, are the shield about me, my Glory and the One who lifts my head.” Red continues, “ breathe Your life into me, I can feel You.” Thousand Foot Krutch elaborates a bit more, “I’ve always been strong, but I can’t make this happen, because (of the sin) I need to breathe, I want to breathe You in. The fear of becoming, (lost) so tired of the running,” we do on our accord, defenseless to ward off the evils that bring us to our knees.

Like the Psalm, TFK, adds that we have tried so hard not to walk away (but we do) and soon find that things don’t go our way but we carry on the same way again and again, King David writes, that we have cried out to the Lord and that He has answered us from His Holy mountain. Red concludes that we are falling, falling faster and faster and that we need You now more then ever. You breathe Your life into us, and prevent us from hitting the bottom….