Do you worry about anything and everything? Do you expect bad things to happen to you? Do you listen to the doubters, skeptics and unbelievers more than you listen to God? If you answered yes to any one of these questions you need to stop, rewind your brain all the way back to the time that you knelt in prayer, confessed your sins and received Christ into your heart; because at that moment in time you knew that God had forgiven you and that He would bless and keep you.

Throughout the Bible God gives us His promises and relates them to us by saying “I will” do this or that and most of the time they come with the condition by The Lord saying, “if” we will keep His Word and be obedient. In the Psalms the writer states, “I will,” do such and such but never seems to put a condition on God. We are to do what is right even when God does not bless us for doing so, don’t you think?

If you read on in this Psalm you will find that not all was hunky-dory will David. As usual he was facing some enemy and he was pleading his cause before the LORD. But in the midst of his trials, he was determined to praise and worship the LORD.

Just so you know, I did not spring out of bed this morning, neither did I go dancing through house just because it is the beginning of a new year. The date changed and the year changed but nothing else did. I might have had a little more energy if the explosions of fireworks had not kept me awake until after midnight. The aches and pains that I had yesterday are still with me today as they probably are with you. There are still wars being fought. Nations still want to destroy other nations. People will still die. And, criminals will still commit crimes, etc., etc., and etc. Now doesn’t all that sound encouraging?

My wife and I have lived at this location for nearly forty years. Just outside our fence there is a very tall palm tree. It has weathered every dust storm that has come our way; every frost in winter and the extreme heat of summer; yet it continues to grow. It casts its seeds and little palm trees come up from them, which I have to pull up. The city has to trim it every year because it continues to flourish.

The problem that the naysayers, unbelievers and skeptics have is that they don’t either know the Word of God nor believe in the God of the Word. Since they don’t know, they can and will say just about anything and make gullible people believe it. So, as they say, you have got to buy a battery powered car and quit using hairspray from aerosol cans, etc., etc., etc.