Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. –Psalm 16:1

This verse has become the most common prayer that I pray. I pray it both for its simplicity and its profundity. The logic of the prayer is that of a child’s: “Save me for no other reason than that I’m in danger and I’ve run to you for help.” “Keep me because I seek safety and protection in you.” Not, “Keep me because of my past or future faithfulness.” Not, “Preserve me because I’m useful or because I’m worthy.” Just, “Preserve me, because I’m frightened and I’m here and my eyes are looking to you.”

The childlike spirit of the request is reflected in Thomas Ken’s “Evening Hymn.”

All praise to thee, my God, this nightFor all the blessing of the light.Keep me, O keep me, King of kingsBeneath thine own almighty wings.

But the prayers of a child are not necessarily childish prayers. Often there is a depth and weight to such prayers which make them fitting for Christians of all ages. Meditate with me on the depth of this simple prayer.

Preserve Me from What?

King David’s prayer implies perils we must seek refuge from. There are threats, dangers, hostile forces, challenges. And there are. In the world. In the church. In your life and mine.

The psalm does not specify the dangers. But we can imagine. The dangers could be external. Enemies who plot and scheme and set traps. Wicked men who lie in wait and pursue the innocent. Liars and slanderers who utter false things against us. Disease and sickness which lay us low. The loss of wealth or job or other forms of earthly security.

All of these (and more) could be in the mind of the psalmist. More importantly, the absence of specificity allows us to fill in the gap, to supply our own dangers and threats and challenges so that David’s prayer becomes our own.

Seeking Refuge

In the face of the danger (whatever dangers we face), the response is the same: we seek refuge in God. The notion of “taking refuge” is a common one in Scripture. It means to find shelter and protection and safety in something. When the scorching sun beats down on us, we take refuge in the shade of a tree. When the icy winds and snowstorms threaten, we take refuge in a warm house.

The image often connotes a pursuer (Psalm 7:2; 17:7). If a man accidentally kills another, for example, he flees to a city of refuge in order to be kept from the avenger of blood. Or the city of Zion, founded by Yahweh, is a refuge for the afflicted of his people (Isaiah 14:32). If someone shoots an arrow at us, we take refuge behind a shield.

A refuge belongs to a cluster of biblical terms that identify places of sanctuary and strength. Psalm 18 stacks such terms one after another. “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold” (Psalm 18:2).

“When our self-sufficiency is proved to be the lie that it is, where do we run?”

To seek refuge means to find the place where we can let down our guard, where we don’t have to be on high alert. To find refuge is to find rest, a place where we can sleep because someone strong and secure is keeping watch. Images give the term meaning. The child, fleeing from a bully, takes refuge at his older brother’s side. The chicks, hearing a loud noise, take refuge beneath the wings of their mother. The desperate family, pursued by soldiers, finds a hiding place in the Ten Boom house.

The prayer of Psalm 16:1 poses challenging questions to us. When we face dangers and threats, where do we turn? When our self-sufficiency is proved to be the lie that it is, where do we run? When we sense danger, we all seek refuge. But do we seek refuge in God? Do we run to him? Do we hide in him? Or do we run to earthly shelters, to worldly fortresses, to false idols?

Enemy Within

There are real external dangers in the world. And when we face them, we ought to seek refuge in God and cry to him to keep us.

I am daily sensible, though, that the greatest threat to my being kept and preserved is not external opposition, or persecution by non-Christians, or physical threats, or relational conflict among former friends and colleagues, or misrepresentations and slander. The greatest threat to my being kept is my own unbelief. Not things out there; something in here. Unbelief is the greatest threat and danger and challenge that I face. Which means when I pray, “Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge,” I mean, “I take refuge in you from me.” My thoughts. My passions. My sinful desires. My doubts. My moods. My unbelief.

What’s more, I have found that frequently Psalm 16:1 is both a request and a fulfillment of the request. That is, God is answering the prayer, in part, in my praying of the prayer. He is keeping me in my prayer to be kept. The prayer itself interrupts the thoughts, passions, desires, doubts, and moods that were threatening my faith.

Rescue Me from Doubt

Consider how Psalm 16:1 interrupts doubts. There I am, living as a Christian, resting in and hoping in Christ. The risen Christ is a living assumption undergirding my life and actions, and his word and gospel frame reality for me.

Then doubts come crashing into that normal Christian life. Perhaps doubts about my eternal state. Or perhaps doubts about the reality of God and the truth of the gospel. The bedrock conviction of life feels shaken. Faith feels fragile, and I wonder whether I’ll be kept. In those moments, “the God question” can easily become all-consuming. Unbelief and skepticism become the default posture of the soul, and the mind revolves endlessly on itself, looking for a way out. In other words, I’m seeking refuge.

“God is not a puzzle to be solved, but a person to be sought.”

In those moments, Psalm 16:1 is both a prayer and a means of deliverance. The prayer reframes the doubts and the questions because Psalm 16:1 is both a description and an enactment. I don’t just ask him to keep me because I’ve sought refuge in him in the past. I am seeking refuge in God now, in the present, by asking him to keep me now, in the present.

In praying the psalm, I turn from thinking about God as an intellectual puzzle from a posture of unbelief. Instead, I am addressing God as a person from a posture of desperate and child-like faith. And that difference is crucial. God is not a puzzle to be solved, but a person to be sought.

Preserve Me, O God

Psalm 16:1 interrupts my doubts by awakening me to the reality that we never talk about God behind his back. Our thoughts and deeds, our desires and doubts, our questions and moods — all of these are conducted in his presence, before his face, at his right hand.

The prayer of Psalm 16:1 is a prayer of faith, since I am no longer attempting to reason about God in his absence but addressing him as Father in his presence. And through such awakenings and interruptions, God answers my prayer. He keeps me, because I seek refuge in him.

Yes, Psalm 16:1 is as profound as it is simple, as simple as it is profound. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. And therefore, I encourage you, in the face of dangers and enemies, anxieties and fears, doubt and unbelief, make Psalm 16:1 your prayer.

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.

Audio Transcript

We end the week, Pastor John, with a topic that dawned on me recently. Not long ago, I was editing a powerful sermon clip taken from your sermon series on Romans 7:14–25, applying what it means to be a Christian who lives with disordered desires. It was a sermon clip sent to us from a woman in Greece who struggled for years with an eating disorder and who chose to open up and tell others about her sin only after having heard your pastoral conclusion to sermon five.

It’s an amazing clip and a powerful listener testimony that we published about a month ago as APJ 1751. But when I researched that clip and set it up for the podcast, I noticed we’ve never entered into the debate over Romans 7 here on the podcast. Is this the struggle of Christian Paul or pre-Christian Saul? Several times here, you’ve said it’s a believer’s struggle (like in APJ 802, 1183, 1438) and then built from this stated conclusion. But you’ve never defended that position in APJ, and I’d love to hear you do so. How would you frame the disagreement? And why do you land on the side of Romans 7 describing the believer’s struggle?

The disagreement about Romans 7:14–25 is whether Paul is describing some dimension of his Christian experience — or whether he’s describing his pre-Christian experience of defeat as he tried to keep the law, and he’s describing it now from his perspective as a Christian. Now, my view is that Romans 7:14–25 is a description of the kind of experiences Paul often had as a Christian, and that we often have. And I say often had because I don’t want to give the impression that those verses describe the totality of Christian experience.

Now, this disagreement is among really good friends, right? You and I can name really good friends that just don’t see eye to eye on this, and I love those brothers. I don’t consider this disagreement as a ground for any kind of breaking of a relationship or a fellowship.

Framing the Disagreement

The disagreement exists because, on the one hand, Paul says, “I delight in the law of God, in my inner being” (Romans 7:22), and he says, “I myself serve the law of God with my mind” (Romans 7:25) — which is hard to imagine as a description of pre-Christian Paul. That’s my opinion. It’s very hard to imagine that.

On the other hand, he says, “I am of the flesh, sold under sin” (Romans 7:14), or, “I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15), and so on. My disagreeing brother would ask, Would a Christian say that? Would the Christian Paul describe himself that way — “sold under sin”?

So, there’s the problem, and I’m going to give nine reasons for thinking these are Paul’s description of his present experience from time to time, though not his total Christian experience.

1. ‘I’ in the Present Tense

The most natural way to understand Paul’s use of the first person I and the present tense is that he’s talking about himself and part of his life now as a believer. He uses I or me or my about forty times in this text, and he explains his situation in the present tense all the way through.

“I am of flesh,” “what I am doing I do not understand,” “I do the very thing I do not want,” and so on — present tense. On the face of it, then, it looks like he’s describing his present Christian experience. So, for the average person like me, it’s going to take a lot to say, “No, that’s not what is happening.”

2. Law in the Inner Being

Paul speaks about the law of God in this passage in a way that sounds like the way a Christian believer would talk about it — not the way an unregenerate Jewish man would talk about it. “I delight in the law of God, in my inner being” (Romans 7:22). Now, it’s this phrase “in the inner man” that sounds so much like the way Paul talks as a Christian about the Christian’s real inner self. I don’t think Paul would have said this about his pre-Christian self.

3. Inconsistent with His Past

The description of Romans 7 of Paul as a divided and sometimes tormented man in relation to the law doesn’t fit with the way he describes his experience before he was a Christian.

In his pre-Christian days, he is anything but a man who is torn because of any perceived failures to live up to the law of God. In Galatians 1 and Philippians 3, he describes himself as having undivided zeal for the law. So the Romans 7 Paul doesn’t fit with the way he described his pre-Christian experience.

4. More Than Fallen Flesh

I think Paul talks about himself in Romans 7 in a way that only a Christian could — a person with faith and with the Holy Spirit.

“In Paul’s view, the pre-Christian person is only flesh. Only a Christian is more than fallen flesh.”

For example, he says in Romans 7:18, “I know that nothing good dwells in me” — and then he qualifies it — “that is, in my flesh.” Now, if Paul is here giving a Christian assessment of his pre-Christian experience, then why does he add to the statement “nothing good dwells in me” the qualifier “that is, in my flesh”?

I think, in Paul’s view, the pre-Christian person is only flesh. Only a Christian is more than fallen flesh. He has the Holy Spirit, and that’s why Paul has to say that qualifier: “that is, in my flesh.” There is a good thing in me — namely, the Holy Spirit. So he’s not talking about the pre-Christian Paul, I think.

5. Parallel to Galatians 5

In Galatians 5:17, Paul uses language very close to Romans 7, but everyone agrees that in Galatians, it’s a description of Christian experience.

He says in Galatians 5:17, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other” — and now comes the phrase that sounds just like Romans 7, almost the same language — “to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” This is a description of the inner conflict of the Christian, and the language is so similar to Romans 7 — “I do what I don’t want to do; I don’t do what I want to do” — that I conclude Romans 7 is also Christian experience like Galatians 5.

6. Temporarily Enslaved To Sin

My sixth argument is an answer to the strongest argument against my view — at least that’s what some say it is. In Romans 7:14, Paul says, “I am of the flesh, sold under sin.” And my friends would say, “Would Paul really say, Piper, of a Christian that he is sold under sin?” The imagery is of being sold as a slave. Can a Christian ever say, “I am sold under the slave master of sin”? After all, Romans 6:18 says, “Having been set free from sin, [you] have become slaves of righteousness.”

Now, my response is that I don’t think Paul is saying the Christian lives under sin as a normal way of life — continually dominated and defeated by sin — but that in the moment of failure, sin gets the upper hand like a slave master temporarily getting control of a person who’s not really his. I think this because both in Romans 6:12 and Galatians 5:1 Paul warns Christians precisely not to submit again to the reign, or to the yoke, of slavery.

It’s a real possibility that Christians can see themselves as temporarily sold under sins. I don’t think that is a decisive counterargument.

7. Unbelievers Don’t Cry for Freedom

This is a response to the objection from Romans 7:24. Can a real Christian cry out, “Who will set me free from the body of this death?” To which my response is, Can a real Christian not cry out, “Who will set me free from this body of death”?

“The unbeliever does not cry out for release. He doesn’t. He is at home in it. This is a Christian cry.”

The body is not only diseased and dying and groaning, according to Romans 8, but it is also the staging ground for many evil desires, Paul says. It is regularly the base of operations for sin. The unbeliever does not cry out for release from this. He doesn’t. He is at home in it. This is a Christian cry.

8. Free from Captivity, Not Warfare

My eighth argument is the way others use Romans 8:2 — this is, I think, very powerful. It says, “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” Now, some say that this is a clear declaration that the warfare of Romans 7 is over because the phrase law of sin in 8:2 is used in Romans 7:23. The person in verse 23 is made “a captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” But now, in Romans 8:2, we are free from the law of sin and death.

So, people conclude the person in 7:23 cannot be a Christian because the Christian is Romans 8:2, and he’s free from that. But I think, in view of all we’ve seen and in view of the exhortations in Romans 6, that to say we are now in Christ set free from the law of sin does not at all preclude the reality that from time to time the law of sin does indeed get the upper hand and must be repented of and renounced.

There is a freedom from it, but not an absolute freedom from its influence, which we can defeat with warfare in the Spirit.

9. Anticlimax in Romans 7:25

Romans 7 seems to reach its climax in verse 25, the first half of the verse. It goes like this: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” In other words, who’s going to deliver me from this horrible situation that I’ve been describing in these verses in Romans 7? Answer: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

This is often taken to mean that after all the failure of verses 14–25, Paul now arrives at a point of triumph and transition. He is moving from the defeated pre-Christian experience of Romans 7 to the triumphant Christian experience of Romans 8. But if that’s the way Paul is thinking, the second half of verse 25 is a colossal embarrassment and a stumbling block.

Verse 25 closes like this, which doesn’t at all fit this understanding of a big transition from Romans 7 to 8, with the fulcrum being the first half of verse 25. Just when this view expects a triumphant statement about how the divided man is finally united in victory and beyond conflict and entirely under the sway of the Spirit, what do you get in the second half of verse 25?

You get just what you would expect to get if Romans 7 is really about the frequent Christian experience of conflict and struggle. You get a summary statement of the struggling and divided life. It goes like this: “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (Romans 7:25). What an anticlimax if the intention is to say that there’s this decisive break between chapters 7 and 8.

So, for these nine reasons, I think we should read Romans 7:14–25 as the description, not of the totality of Christian experience, but of the kind of discouragements and conflicts and defeats we often encounter as we do battle with sin.

I imagine the short paragraph from Jeremiah Burroughs landed like it did that morning, in part, because my 2-year-old had just thrown an entire bowl of cereal on the floor — again. An exceedingly small affliction, to be sure, but not an exceedingly small mess (or an exceedingly rare one, for that matter).

Unbeknownst to me, the milky Cheerios strewn across my kitchen floor prepared the way for a life-changing illustration. Hours later, I read,

It is a saying of Luther: “The sea of God’s mercies should swallow up all our particular afflictions.” Name any affliction that is upon you: there is a sea of mercy to swallow it up. If you pour a pailful of water on the floor of your house, it makes a great show, but if you throw it into the sea, there is no sign of it. So, afflictions considered in themselves, we think are very great, but let them be considered with the sea of God’s mercies we enjoy, and then they are not so much, they are nothing in comparison. (209)

“If you have God in your affliction, your burden is but a bucket in the ocean.”

Name any affliction that is upon you — chronic pain or sudden illness, persistent relational tension, the thorns and thistles of your workplace, a tortuous inability to fall (or stay) asleep, the loss of someone you love — name any affliction that is upon you, and there’s a sea of mercy to swallow it up. If you have God in your affliction, your burden is but a bucket in the ocean.

Buckets of Affliction

Now, to say that a burden is but a bucket (or “nothing in comparison”) is not to say that it is actually nothing. To suggest so would gut Burroughs’ scene of its power and belittle the immense mercy of God. No, as we all know, even a pailful of water can be truly disorienting. And life among our storms often makes heavy buckets feel like ponds, or rivers, or even oceans.

Few have carried suffering better than the apostle Paul, and yet hear him describe his “bucket” in a particular season:

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. (2 Corinthians 1:8–9)

Notice, receiving affliction well does not mean downplaying affliction. Paul despaired of life itself — and he doesn’t apologize for feeling (or speaking) that way. The bucket of water felt like a death sentence. And he wanted the others to know his pain was that intense, that bitter, that bleak (“We do not want you to be unaware, brothers . . .”).

“Receiving affliction well does not mean downplaying affliction.”

No, faith doesn’t downplay affliction, but it does place our sometimes overwhelming affliction next to the always overwhelming mercy of God in Christ.

Oceans of Mercy

The power of Burroughs’ imagery, then, doesn’t come from diminishing our suffering or distracting us from it, but from setting our suffering in proper proportion to reality. Does anything we experience distort ultimate, spiritual reality more than suffering does? If we who are in Christ could see everything as it really is, our affliction — any affliction — would look smaller than it feels, wouldn’t it? In many cases, a lot smaller.

As we’ve seen, Paul felt his pain acutely, and he didn’t ignore it or shy away from it or even keep it to himself. But he also wouldn’t let it blind him to the endless waves of mercy washing over him. Just a few verses earlier, with affliction crashing around him, he can still say,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction. (2 Corinthians 1:3–4)

In all our affliction, his mercy is more. Through eyes filled with tears, he can still see the sea. He knows that nothing — not beatings, not imprisonments, not riots, not sleepless nights, not hunger — nothing can separate him from the love of Christ. And so he always has more comfort than sorrow. Even while he has real, painful reasons to despair, he has even more reasons to bless God.

Because the apostle Paul stood along the same shores Luther and Burroughs later found, he could say of great, unwanted, unbearable suffering, “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Our buckets are shallow and brief beside the unseen oceans awaiting us. Everything we ever lost and endured will be swallowed up by “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).

Joy Hiding in Buckets

When we lay our pails of affliction beside the sea of God’s mercy, we can begin to make sense, can’t we, of this strange marriage in Scripture between suffering and joy (see Romans 5:3; Colossians 1:24; 1 Thessalonians 1:6). Again and again, we see saints not only finding the strength to bear and endure suffering, but actually learning to rejoice, even while the floors are still soaking wet.

Paul, for instance, can go as far as saying, “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy” (2 Corinthians 7:4). In all our affliction — not before or after or even beneath. And not a slow, weak drip of joy, but overflowing joy. This kind of joy perseveres in suffering, and even sometimes grows — like red and yellow and deep purple tulips in beds of snow. How could joy thrive out in the bitter cold? Because, in the right hands, unwanted buckets remind us to look beyond to the ocean.

A chapter later, Paul observes the same marvel in the church at Macedonia. Notice, again, how surprising joy finds its way into the fires of suffering: “In a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part” (2 Corinthians 8:2). Joy didn’t wither in the throes of adversity and poverty, but amazingly swelled and overflowed. Their buckets were many and too heavy to carry, but they were also thimbles lost in far greater waters.

And the same miracle happens among the Hebrews: “You had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property . . .” (Hebrews 10:34). We might understand them accepting what happened here, but joyfully accepting? How does someone rejoice while they suffer this kind of evil? Finish the verse: “ . . . since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” Since they had set their buckets beside the wider, deeper seas of God’s mercies. How much can we really lose? How much can anyone really take from us?

Your Feet in the Sand

Few of us need help seeing our buckets of trouble. We regularly trip and stumble over them and then clean up the messes. The buckets may be bigger or smaller, newer and older, fuller or lighter, but we all have them.

We need help, however, seeing the massive and wild seas beyond our buckets. We’re far more acquainted with our light and momentary afflictions than we are with all that God has worked and promised to those who love him. We’re experts in our miseries and infants in his mercies. And we wonder why our life often feels like one big, messy bucket after another.

The good news is that, if we’re in Christ, we already live on oceanfront property. Many of us, however, need to get out and feel the sand more. We spend too much time cleaning up messes in rooms without windows — all while the shore’s just a few feet away. But we need to see the water every day — to hear the roar of the waves, to smell the freshness of the air, to taste of the ocean, to search and search for where it ends.

So what habits help you sense and wonder at the mercy of God in Christ? How often do you lay down your buckets and let your feet feel the sand? What relationships help you consistently wade out further into his word and his work? Where does the wider lens of spiritual reality come into clearer focus?

If we’ll lift up our eyes, his mercy will swallow any sorrow.