Psalm 3:5 Sustained Sleep

Psalm 3:5 I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.

Psalm 3 is the first psalm with a heading. It reveals itself to be A psalm of David as about half the psalms prove to be labelled. It was written When he fled from his son Absalom after Absalom had rebelled and taken the kingship. You can read about this in 2 Samuel 15. The psalm is brief. It is a prayer. David begins with his troubles in the first two verses but soon gives many expressions of his great faith and confidence in God. The closing two verses contain two final prayers that bracket a final general statement of confidence in God (From the LORD comes deliverance). Because of verse 5 the psalm is considered a morning prayer. What David says there was particularly appropriate to him as the rebellion was so fierce that he genuinely had no idea whether he would even make it through the night alive. However, as he says, I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me. That is what made the difference. Morning by morning countless believers can say the same thing. I write this in the early morning and I have indeed lain down and slept. I have also awoken and now I want to acknowledge that it is because the LORD sustains me. That is how I came through. Without him, there would have been no laying down, no sleep and no wakening again either. And if I am going to come through anything, then it will only be because of him. So, although I am more aware of this when I am in trouble and tend perhaps to be more prayerful at such times, the truth is that every day I sleep and wake, it is only because of him and that very fact ought to prompt a multitude of prayers from me.