It’s a song to be sung when your season is one of trying to hold on for dear life. A song for when the natural thing to do is to be fearful and afraid as you look out on an all too familiar battlefield. Whether it’s facing flesh-and-blood foes or enemies of circumstance and situations, it’s a song for when you look out on the day and there are adversaries again encamping against you, ready to war with you (Ps. 27:2-3). For it’s a song that focuses afresh on the LORD who is “my light . . . my salvation . . . the stronghold of my life” (Ps. 27:1). A song that refuses fear. A song that sets again the heart towards one thing:

One thing have I asked of the LORD,
       that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
       all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
       and to inquire in His temple. . .

You have said, “Seek my face.”
My heart says to You,
       “Your face, LORD, do I seek.”

(Psalm 27:4, 8 ESV)

Gaze upon His beauty . . . Seek His face . . .

Turn your eyes away from the battlefield. Focus your heart away from the fight. And look to the One who will hide you in His shelter, conceal you under the cover of His tent, and lift you high upon His Rock (Ps. 27:5). Cry out to Him to teach you His ways, lead you on level paths, and give you not up to the will of your adversaries (Ps. 27:11-12). And do it with a song.

How?

By faith.

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD
       in the land of the living!

(Psalm 27:13 ESV)

The NKJV translation of this verse, with its translator added context, hits home.

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living.

(Psalm 27:13 NKJV)

Though today’s battle may look a whole lot like yesterday’s battle (and the days of battling before that), what’s the antidote for the propensity to despair? It’s believing we will see the goodness of God. And not just in some future, ethereal, “there and then” place and time, but “here and now” in the land of the living.

For we hear His voice as we read His word. Then, by faith, we purpose to seek His face and to gaze upon His beauty. And thus, we know again His shelter and His strength. Even as we are confident we will look upon His goodness.

And so, we keep on keepin’ on with a song — a song for the redeemed.

Only by His grace. Always for His glory.