What shakes you?  What gets your heart pounding and your adrenaline racing?  A plunge in the stock market?  Learning that you no longer have a job? A terrible accident involving a loved one?  Learning that you have cancer?  Fear of contacting COVID 19 and possibly dying?

In Psalm 16:8 David wrote, “I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With Him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” David wrote that he would not be shaken.  Not be shaken by what?  By a bear and then a ferocious lion attacking his livelihood?  By Goliath, a giant who wanted to kill him and take his nation captive? No, David was not shaken by any of these.  Instead, he killed them.  There were a few times David was shaken during the fourteen years King Saul pursued David out of jealousy so he could kill him.  But David quickly found his footing. What caused David to be rarely shaken? David had God, and not his adversaries as his focus. He knew that God was all powerful, and He trusted Him.

Where is God in our vision?  Is He front and center, or is He mired in a myriad of responsibilities or pleasures?  Do we know Him intimately?  Can we say, as David did, “The Lord is my shepherd” and it is He who guides me daily (Psalm 23)?  Do we believe that, “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37)?  I believe that if we both intimately knew God and had Him for our central focus, then we too could say, “Because I have set the Lord before me, I will not be shaken.”

Let’s keep God as our primary focus.  Let’s spend time daily in His word and regularly talk with Him so that we can grow in our knowledge of and relationship with Him.  Then when we are attacked, pursued, or encounter something that shakes our world, we will be able to regain our footing and say, “Because I am keeping my focus on God, I will not be shaken.”