Through you and through your name...there is victory in suffering

Psalm 44 gave me two truths to ponder this morning. First, the psalmist confesses that all of Israel's military victories were not simply the result of their own power and might, even though they had to participate in the fight--their enemies did not just lay down and surrender. "For not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm save them, but your right hand and your arm, and the light of your face...Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down those who rise up against us." (Psalm 44:3, 5)

The paradox that "I worked harder than all of them--yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me." (1 Corinthians 15:10) is not just a New Testament truth. This is the way God has always worked in and through his people. We try and we give all of our strength in loving God and people, but we do it "through" God and his name, and God does it through us.

The second observation is that God doesn't seem to be doing his part (at least according to the Psalmist). "But you have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies." (Psalm 44:9) Could it be that some unconfessed or hidden sin is the culprit here? Not so, says the psalmist: "All this has come upon us though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way." (Psalm 44:17-18)

So what seems to be the problem? The psalmist can think of no other possibility than that God is lazy, distracted, hiding or angry: "Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?" (Psalm 44:23-24) The psalmist can think of no reason for suffering if the people of God are being faithful.

But the apostle Paul, writing hundreds of years later, quotes from this very psalm of disorientation in his letter to the church at Rome: "If God is for us, who can be against us?...Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." (Romans 8:31, 35-37)

God's being "for us" and working through us does not mean we won't suffer what appears to be defeat, even death. But Paul sees here (because of the revelation of Christ) what the psalmist only saw from a distance: that God's power in and through us gives us victories "in all these things" (defeats, sufferings, tribulations, etc.), not from all these things.

God works through us, and God loves us as he works us through our suffering.