Patiently wait for God alone, my soul! For he is the one who gives me confidence. He alone is my protector and deliverer. He is my refuge; I will not be upended. (Psalm 62:5,6 NET)
Here we see King David speaking to himself when he tells his soul to wait patiently for God, to trust that He will protect and deliver. In psychology they call this “self-talk,” and most of the time it is negative, harsh and critical. Only when we train ourselves to make this running commentary positive, does it help us. Its default setting, in most or all of us, is negative and critical, causing doubt, fear, insecurity and paralysis.
Most people do not even know that any negative commentary is going on. They have heard these words for so many years, they accept it as the truth and allow it to go unchallenged and unquestioned.
But David doesn’t do this. He had learned from a very young age to use positive self-talk to create faith in God and to combat fear and doubt. The simple phrase, “I will not be upended,” was a bold statement that he repeats twice in this psalm, and must have used over and over again in life. When he told his soul to patiently wait for God alone, his reason was rebuking his heart and emotions for giving in to doubt and fear. He used the higher parts of his brain — his sense of reason and knowledge of God — to control the lower parts of his brain — his knee-jerk reactions of fight and flight. He resisted his animalistic impulses, and determined to act in a spiritual, godly manner.
When speaking to his soul, David made five positive statements in rapid succession, bombarding his soul with positive words, a technique that we need to perfect if we want to see positive results. The more we train ourselves to think in positive, faith-filled ways, the more of God’s power we will see in our lives.
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