"Give ear to my words, O Lord;
consider my groaning.
2 Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.
3 O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
6 You destroy those who speak lies;
the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple
in the fear of you.
8 Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness
because of my enemies;
make your way straight before me.
9 For there is no truth in their mouth;
their inmost self is destruction;
their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongue.
10 Make them bear their guilt, O God;
let them fall by their own counsels;
because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out,
for they have rebelled against you.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
let them ever sing for joy,
and spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may exult in you.
12 For you bless the righteous, O Lord;
you cover him with favour as with a shield."
Psalm 5
It is striking to see in so many of the Psalms the sense of conflict with enemies. This is the inevitable accompaniment of true spiritual life. To walk in fellowship with God is to be at war with Satan and unrighteousness. This is a salutary corrective to the kind of teaching on the spiritual life which represents it as a long day of sunshine - 'Now I am happy all the day'. Nor was David on a lower level of spiritual experience than the New Testament - Paul's life was like this also: he had conflicts - 'fightings without, fears with- in', like the Psalmist. The Christian position is not 'Delivered from these we are more than conquerors', but 'In all these things we are more than conquerors'. This Psalm shows us the way to victory. We might well paraphrase its meaning thus: 'What to do when under pressure'. This is the virtue of the Psalter: we extract general principles for living from the particular and concrete situations in which the Psalmist found himself, and apply them to our own needs, in the faith that the grace that met him will meet us also. The Psalm falls into two stanzas, 1-7, dealing with the inward side of the devout life, its access to God, and 8-12, dealing with the outward side, the conduct, the 'way' in which the Psalmist seeks to be led. The one follows the other, naturally and inevitably. Communion with God precedes all walking in His way, and all blessed experience of His protection, with the joy that springs from it. 'What to do under pressure?' First main- tain communion with God; second, ask Him to level out the way before you, removing obstacles (is not He the God Who makes the rough places plain?); third, look for an an- swer to your prayer: 3 is followed by 8, this is the prayer for which he looks to God for an answer; finally, the resultant experience is expressed in 11, 12: joy and peace.