Midweek Reset: The Rock Higher Than I

So the other day I was listening to one of my favorite preachers, Cliff Goodwin, and he was preaching from Psalm 61.

And he brought out something in this passage that I had never heard before.

And honestly, I was so surprised and delighted by it because you know how sometimes you've read a verse plenty of times and you know the verse, you love the verse, and then somebody points out one little thing, like a little detail that makes you stop and see the whole thing differently.

That's what happened to me with Psalm 61.

So in Psalm 61, David says, Hear my cry, O God.

Attend to my prayer.

From the end of the earth I will cry to you.

When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I. That's verses one and two, and I'm reading from the New King James.

So I have heard these verses.

I've read them before.

I've probably even quoted that verse, actually, at some point.

But Brother Cliff pointed out something about that phrase, the rock that is higher than I, that I had never really stopped to think about.

So when you look at the Hebrew behind that phrase, it carries this idea of the rock being high beyond David.

So some translations bring out the sense of lead me to the rock that is too high for me and sisters, I love that.

Because that really changes the big picture for me.

Because David isn't just saying, Lord, there's a rock over there.

Point me toward it and I'll climb up it.

Right? That's not what's going on.

His heart is overwhelmed.

He is crying out to God and asking him, leave me somewhere that I can't get to on my own.

This rock is too big.

for me he needs God to get him there and I don't really know why I had never really thought about it that way before but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since actually because how often do we find ourselves standing in front of something that is just well too high for us it's just too high for us something that you know we can't fix something we can't control, something that we can't figure out.