From Humiliation To Exaltation

You, LORD, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.

Psalm 3:3 (NIV)

As David wrote this psalm, his enemies, determined to destroy him and mocking him and his faith, were led by his son Absalom. This added insult to injury and rubbed salt in David’s wounds. The pain of betrayal by a beloved son was played out on the battlefield. No wonder David’s head was bowed—in grief, in defeat, in depression, in humiliation.

But throughout David’s life he had thoroughly tested God’s promises and proved them true. He knew that God was a shield around him, that God was present in all his power, repelling the enemy’s death blows. God himself absorbed the shame and the hurt so that David could hold his head high again.

My friend Judith’s husband was a successful pharmaceutical salesman, an upstanding member of the community, and a pillar of the church. Judith was proud to be his wife and actually found her identity in those terms—until her husband was convicted of selling diluted and out-of-date drugs and was sentenced to several years in the penitentiary.

Everything Judith had believed about her life was a lie. Her husband was not who she thought he was. Her lifestyle had come at the cost of the lives and health of others. Through no fault of her own, Judith saw her world crumble. She was betrayed, humiliated, grieved, defeated. Like David.

The hardest thing for her to do was to step out into her world again. But she clung to Psalm 3:3 as her lifeline, and God proved faithful. Judith began to redefine herself in light of God’s Word instead of her husband’s “success” and her possessions. She walked a painful path from humiliation to exaltation as the Lord lifted up her head, just as he had done for David. Judith now holds her head high because of whose she is.

Lord, in my devastation, I look to you as the one who lifts my head.

Rows of beautiful trees were laid low in a storm. Reason? The water was too near the surface; so the trees did not have to put their roots deep down to find water. . . . God may deny us a surface answer in order to get us to put our roots deeper into eternal reality, so that in some future storm we shall be unmoved.

E. Stanley Jones(1884–1973), American missionary and theologian