May you experience the double bond of God’s keeping you,

And that of you holding fast to God,

Coming under the shadow of his wings in this world,

And cemented to him by grace through faith

In union with Christ.

May you never be swallowed up by the world’s sorrows,

But while the wicked fade, may you flourish,

While the wicked complain, may you sing,

While the wicked seek to justify themselves, may you confess

That God justifies sinners through Jesus Christ alone.

Amen.

1. The context of the Psalms indicates these hills are positively used in other Psalms (123:1; 125:2; 133:3). The first as referring to the covenant Lord, the second that this covenant Lord surrounds his people, and third that they are hills of Zion which is the place of blessing.

2. The lifting of the eyes is an idiom signifying desire and hope, and is never associated with fear.

3. Therefore, “it is more likely, that he lifts up his eyes in hope toward the hills of Zion. He looks through the hills as symbols of the covenant God himself.”

Ash goes on to make this profound paraphrase of the idea in the beginning of this Psalm. The idea is that…

“I lift up my eyes in faith and hope to the hills of Zion, because I know that in those hills the covenant God has set his promises. Where does my help come from? It comes precisely from the covenant Lord symbolized by those hills.”

Thus, God’s promises are rock solid from the very beginning to the end. That is the map of history laid out in God’s covenants which culminate on Mount Zion in the New Testament hope.2

The essential idea is that the mountains or hills carry a significance in Scripture, a significance of promise. We begin at the mountain of Eden (called such after Genesis in the book of Ezekiel 28) where the first promise was made (Genesis 3:15). And then we move on to the other mountains — Mount Ararat where God made a covenant with Noah promising a continuation of the world to the end. And then we move to Mount Moriah where God promised to Abraham to provide a Lamb. The next move is to Mount Sinai where the Law was given (the very law that Christ would be born under and fulfill). And lastly there is Mount Zion the mountain largely figurative of the heavenly church as stated in Hebrews.

I still plan to use Psalm 121 in prayer and ministry, but simply more deeply and faithfully. I want to point people to the strong gospel hope of God’s solid mountain-like promises all the way home to glory. As I minister to them, I want to join with my brothers and sisters in Christ in the amazement of God’s gracious promises and beautiful hope that above all carries all of history, and therefore certainly is to be trusted along the pilgrimage in our lives. God is faithful.

What makes this discovery so special is that our congregation at Catherine Lake is currently studying some of these exact subjects!

History shows that Harris and George Whitefield became close friends during the First Great Awakening. While The Pilgrim’s Progress and Isaiah are not explicitly named in this specific portion of Whitefield’s biography, the linguistic and spiritual parallels are undeniable.

Echoes of The Pilgrim’s Progress

On page 237, Dallimore shares a journal entry from Harris that perfectly captures the weight of conviction:

“The more I searched into the nature of things, the more I saw myself and others to be on the broad road to destruction…”

This closely mirrors John Bunyan’s concept of the “City of Destruction”—the temporal city of man that stands doomed without the grace of the City of God.

In a subsequent entry on the same page, Harris describes the moment of his conversion:

“I lost my burden; I went home leaping for joy! I knew that my sins were forgiven: Oh blessed day! Would that I might remember it gratefully evermore!”

For anyone who has or is reading Pilgrim’s Progress, it is near impossible to read this without picturing Bunyan’s character, Christian, weeping for joy as his own heavy burden rolls away at the foot of the cross.

Echoes of Isaiah 64

Moving forward to page 239, Dallimore shares another entry where Harris records a profound experience of God’s presence:

“I felt suddenly my heart melting within me, like wax before the fire…”

This imagery perfectly aligns with the language of revival found in Isaiah 64, which cries out for the heavens to rend and describes the mountains melting down at the presence of the Lord.

Why This Matters Today

The shared language of conversion and revival shines clearly through these historical pages. For our church community, this three-fold connection serves as a powerful encouragement.

It reminds us that the work of the Holy Spirit is consistent across time. By looking back at these divine affirmations—wrought first in the souls of Old Testament saints, and later in the great awakenings of the 18th century—our own hopes are raised for what God can do among us today.

Keeping the heart, therefore, is staying in the Word. It is lamentable that the first thing to go when our hearts are interested in other things is the Word. But this makes sense, because as John Flavel (1628–1691 A.D.) writes, “Keep the Word, and the Word will keep you.”1 The Word of God helps us to not merely honor God with our lips, but with our hearts (cf. Matt. 15:8). But it is expected to be the pure Word as interpreted and applied by our Lord Jesus Christ, not a pharisaical perversion of the Word that by misapplication to the external things, the heart is not chiefly valued.

Today when I read a portion of Psalms, I found myself at the ending of the first book of the Psalms, Psalm 72 which ends with:

And this statement about the prayers of David being ended struck my curiosity. I thought, “I wonder if I can expect going forward to find only other human authors speaking in the Psalms.” I knew from memory that this could not be the case, though I have my suspicions about Psalm 119 being an unknown author exiled in Babylon. Nevertheless, there I thought for a moment, made a quick reference to some commentary on the matter and discovered that this verse is best to take as a doxology to Book 2 of the Psalms. Books 1 & 2 of the Psalms are alone given the title “The Prayers of David.” And that,

“This means neither that every psalm in these books was written by David (notably Pss. 42–50) nor that no later psalms can be by David, but it reflects the fact that he is the main author and highlights the overwhelming importance of Davidic kingship in Psalms 1–72” (Ash).2

There is perhaps little to apply here except for the fact of knowing God’s Word. But then I went further to look at some applications in the same commentary. A quote by David Dickson (1583–1663 A.D.) made me ponder:

“A king may command within his kingdom many things, but he cannot command a blessing on his own government; he must make suit for this to God. He may leave a kingdom to his child; but because a kingdom is nothing without God’s blessing, he must pray for this blessing, and seek the assistance of the prayers of the church for this intent: and this duty kings may crave of the church, and God’s people should not refuse it.”

Ash rightly assesses,

“There is also a valid, and important, derivative application of Psalm 72 as we pray for our earthly leaders (1 Tim. 2:1–2)…But as we pray for our rulers, the focus of our prayers will not be that their dominion should extend through space or time but rather that it will embody righteous judgments; our prayers will be moral in their focus more than they will petition for success.”

All that is to say, I was directed in thought to pray for rulers in a way to seek them to be blessed of God in a particular way. I prayed something to the effect, “Lord, bless our leaders with godly judgment, not to seek to extend their rule, but to demonstrate your righteousness.”

Now, does being in the Word really matter? I believe it does, not so that we can say we have been, but so that we renew our minds and serve the Lord foremost in intercession for kings and all people to know and demonstrate the same righteousness we enjoy of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus, I learned that rulers need my prayers. And I find that to be something of significance.