Pause and Trust
Seasons change whether we are ready or not. Jobs shift, health fades and returns, children grow up and move away, and plans we were sure of fall apart and come back together in ways we never expected. Every one of those changes has a way of showing us what we have really been leaning on. When life is steady, it is easy to say we trust God. When the ground moves, we often discover that our trust was in God plus something else: our plans, our paycheck, our health, or the people around us.
Psalm 62 was written by a man whose ground was moving. David may have written it during the dark days when his own son Absalom tried to take his throne. His kingdom was in danger, his reputation was under attack, and his life was at risk. Yet the psalm opens with a remarkable line: “I am at rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him” (v. 1). The Hebrew word behind “rest” carries the idea of stillness or silence. It is not the silence of someone who has given up. It is the quiet of a soul that has stopped churning because it has found its footing.
Not God plus my plan. Not God plus my paycheck. God alone.
Throughout the psalm, David keeps returning to one small Hebrew word, ’ak, which means “only” or “alone.” He uses it six times in the first nine verses. Charles Spurgeon liked to call this “the ‘only’ psalm.” David’s point is simple and searching. God often works through doctors, friends, jobs, and good plans, and we should be grateful for every one of them. But those are gifts in God’s hand, not the ground under our feet. The real question Psalm 62 asks is not, “Do you trust God?” It is, “Do you trust God alone?”
What makes this psalm so helpful is its honesty. David does not pretend everything is fine. He describes himself as “a leaning wall or a tottering fence” (v. 3), like an old stone wall that has been pushed out of line and is ready to fall. His enemies were smiling to his face and plotting behind his back. Many of us know that feeling. A diagnosis, a job loss, a season of grief, or a quiet loneliness can leave us feeling as though one more push would bring us down. Psalm 62 gives us permission to say so. Honesty about our weakness is not a lack of faith. Often it is where faith begins.
Then David does something important: he talks to himself. In verse 1 he says, “I am at rest in God alone.” In verse 5, after facing the threats around him, he says, “Rest in God alone, my soul.” What was a statement becomes a command. Peace in a hard season does not just happen; it has to be chosen and kept. And as David keeps his eyes on God, his confidence grows. In verse 2 he says, in effect, “I will not be greatly shaken.” By verse 6 the qualifier is gone: “I will not be shaken.” Nothing around him has changed, but something in him has.
“Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts before him. God is our refuge.” Psalm 62:8
From there, David turns to the rest of us with the invitation at the heart of the psalm: “Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts before him. God is our refuge” (v. 8). The word for “trust” pictures leaning your full weight on something. The phrase “pour out” describes emptying a container completely, with nothing held back. And “at all times” means every season, not just the calm ones. Then the psalm says Selah, a pause. It is as if David stops to give us room to actually do it. Notice, too, that “my refuge” in verse 7 becomes “our refuge” in verse 8. Trust is not meant to be carried alone.
David closes by putting ever ything on the scale. Powerful people and ordinary people alike weigh “less than a vapor” (v. 9), and wealth makes a poor place to set our hearts (v. 10). Then he names two things he has heard from God again and again: “strength belongs to God, and faithful love belongs to you, Lord” (vv. 11–12). We need both. If God were only strong, we might fear him but never rest in him. If God were only loving, we might wonder whether he could really keep us safe. At the cross of Jesus Christ we see both in full: the power that defeated sin and death, and the love that went to the cross for us. Seasons will keep changing, but the God who is both strong and loving does not. That is why he can be trusted at all times.