"From the Lord.  Part 2"
Daniel Valles

READ Psalm 109

When it seems that your enemies continue to slander and attack you in spite of your love and good, what are we to do?  Can we Biblically lash out and fight back?  Should we start our own smear campaign?  No.  Like David, we should take it to the Lord.  We will find the ultimate reason shortly.

When David took this grief to the Lord and laid it at His feet, he was not necessarily ignoring the problem or living as a doormat, he was taking his problems to the One who could best handle the situation.  Each of the requests that he makes about his enemies is a petition that only God could fulfill.  Verses 6-20 covers twenty-two requests that David asks the LORD to 'let.'  Anything that was going to happen to David's adversaries would be with the sole permission and allowance from God.  In verse twenty, David states that any reward would be "from the LORD." 

What about us?  When we are reviled, when men speak falsely about us, when men slander us for doing what is right, what should we do?  In a physical sense, we should 'do' nothing.  In a spiritual sense, we need to get on our needs like David (vs.24) and pour out our petitions to Him!  Our petitions do not need to be limited to praying that God just deliver us from the circumstances, or that we be able to bear it.  David gave the Lord twenty-two petitions.  Each one was a request for righteous judgment to answer the wicked.  Sometimes the wicked continue to prosper because none of the righteous pray a petition that they will be "cut off" (vs. 13,15), "judged" (vs. 7), "condemned" (vs. 7), or cursed (vs. 17).