A Spacious Place
by Annalene Holtzhausen
Psalm 18 is a wonderful song about the Lord’s victory in David’s life. David sang these words to the Lord when the Lord delivered him from all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.
David’s enemies wanted to destroy him, and we read in verses 4 and 5 how overwhelmed he was: ‘The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me’.
But David called to the Lord in his distress and the Lord heard his voice (verse 6). The Lord came to his rescue in an amazing way and delivered David from his enemies: ‘He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of deep waters’ (Psalm 18:16). The Lord brought David from a place of fear into a spacious place. He rescued him because He delighted in him.
Fear has a way of isolating you; almost as if walls are closing in around you. Your perspective becomes blurred, your breathing feels shallow, and you feel surrounded by your enemy. Sometimes our default reaction becomes one of actually retreating back into the place of fear when we feel threatened. Even though we loathe this place, we know no other way of defence. We submit to the enemy and ‘the walls close in on us’. We isolate ourselves and fear overwhelms us.
But the Lord says He is our Rock, our Fortress, and our Deliverer. In Him we can take refuge. He is our Shield and our safe place (Psalm 18:2). I love the image in today’s verse of the Lord bringing us out into a spacious place. His heart for us is freedom from fear or anything else tormenting us. He rescues us when we call on Him, and also because our righteousness is found in Him.
I realised that the place of fear that we return to in our minds is not real. It’s not God’s truth. The walls that close in are not real. In that moment when the enemy attacks us and fear begins to encircle us, let us not return to that place of darkness. Let us in that moment, choose the Lord’s spacious places and turn away from being ensnared by the enemy. ‘You, Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light’ (Psalm 18:28).
Annalene Holtzhausen is on the Associate Team at Ellel, Africa. She is married to Renier, who introduced her to Ellel Ministries. She is a full-time mother to their two boys. Her passion is for the restoration of women’s hearts and for people to find their worth in the Lord.
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