God Wants to Lift You Up! – Psalms 3:3

Psalms 3:3 tells us, “But you, LORD, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.” (NIV) God wants you to keep your head lifted high. When we go through a tough time God is saying, “Chin up! I am with you.” I can imagine David writing this saying how God was a shield around me. What an amazing picture of God, He is a, “shield around me.” May we constantly remind ourselves of how God is around us.

GotQuestions.com tells us, “What a divine trio of mercies is contained in this verse! — defense for the defenseless, glory for the despised, and joy for the comfortless.”

John 15:1-3 tells us, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away (airó); and every branch that bears fruit, He ^[a]prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. ³ You are already ^[b]clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.

The word used for, “he takes away” is the greek word, “airó.” This word literally means, “To lift up.” When you are not bearing fruit, God  lifts you up! Remember when Jesus healed to paralytic man and told him, “Get up, pick up (airó) your bed and go home.” (Mat. 9:6). He was using this word airó to tell the man to lift up his mat. What Jesus was not saying was to cut your bed. Is this what airó meant in this situation? No, Jesus wanted him to keep his mat and bring it home as a testimony.

Paul Ellis the author of The Gospel in Ten Words wrote, “Unfruitful branches are lifted out of the dirt and re-dressed so they can be nourished by the sun. Sticking with that metaphor, the reason why some Christians are barren is that they’re facedown in the dirt and not looking at the Son.”

What is interesting about vines is how they do not really have branches; they are literally all vine. Jesus is the vine and we are in Him. God wants you to bear fruit. I want you to bear fruit. If I want my pecan tree to bear fruit, I continue to water it. The last thing I would do is cut the tree down. Then I would have no fruit and no tree. If God wants you to bear fruit he will continue to lift you up from the dirt of this world. When vines grow to the ground they become dirty and cannot bear fruit. They will get stepped on and ruined. The best thing to do is to lift the vine up. This is what God does, He lifts you up. He brings the best out of you. God is described in Psalms 3:3 as, “…the One who lifts my head high.” (NIV)