The Psalmist David honestly confesses his sinful nature, his weakness and inability and his desperate condition and circumstances. He tells both God and men what he is: “I AM weak… weary… a worm… poured out like water… desolate and afflicted… in trouble… forgotten… cut off…. troubled… bowed down… feeble and sore broken… ready to halt… frail… consumed… a stranger… not able to look up… poor and needy… weary of my crying… full of heaviness… sorrowful… shut up.. afflicted and ready to die… withered like grass… gone like the shadow…. afraid… small and despised… brought very low.” He cried out, “I have sinned and done wickedly in Thy sight.”

But, by faith, David, knowing what he was, made his plea to God as He is! What “I am” can only be helped by the great “I AM.” David said, “say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” To every believing sinner who calls out to God through the blood and righteousness of Christ the Mediator, God says, “I am thy salvation.” He is our salvation because He has been eternally: He revealed Himself to Moses, saying, “I AM that I AM.” He is because He is “a just God and a Saviour.” My hope is not in what I am but in who He is! “Be still, and know that I am God:” (Psa 46:10) This is the promise of the gospel. God says, “I will bless you, save you, receive you unto myself, forgive you, count you as perfectly righteous and take you to eternal glory, not based on who you are or what you do but on Who I AM! Who I am in my Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ said, “I AM the way…I AM the truth…I AM the life.” God-given faith looks to Christ and Who He is before God.

But even as believers we are often prone to despair and depression because of what we are. The cure is only to be found in looking to who God is. To our “I am weak,” God says “I am strong.” To our “I am sinful,” God says “I am righteous and give righteousness in Christ.” Our “I ams” are answered by God’s “I ams.” God showed mercy and grace to David and he could also say “I am helped….I am like a green olive tree in the house of God…I am holy….I am thy servant.” “I am thine, save me….”

Paul, as a believer trusting Christ for all, said, “I am what I am by the grace of God.” The apostle John echoes this blessed truth, saying, “As He is, so are we in this world.

G. Shepard