Preserve Me, O God
OCTOBER 13, 2026
SCRIPTURE COLLECTION
Today's Scripture Passage
Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
Psalm 16:1-3
Related Scriptures:
1 Peter 1:5
John 10:28-29
Philippians 1:6
Jude 24-25
John 6:37-39
Notes & Reflections
I need God to keep me a Christian.
When I consider my mind, my emotions, my desires, or how I am easily drawn into certain things, I know that I could never make myself a Christian. At times, this can become discouraging if I allow myself to wander from the truth. I find that, when I’m alone, my heart comforts itself with Ephesians 2:8:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
God’s preservation of me is through a faith that he himself gave me.
The Psalmist says, “Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.” He is relying on his faith or trust in God as the reason for God to preserve him. Yet God is preserving him through something he gifted him. Even the prayer itself is a motion of the gifted faith. How can anyone desire and seek to be preserved apart from this great gift already available in their hands? Indeed, the prayer itself is a witness to the certainty that he is, and will undoubtedly be, preserved.
We then find the Psalmist doubling down on this thought as he continues:
“I say to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.’”
What other words does saving faith utter if not these? What miserable creature, in all his wretchedness, in all his sin, in all his deadness, who is once saved, would not consider the Lord infinitely generous?
The very idea that God allows such wickedness and evil to continue for so long is very astonishing. Man could have been wiped from existence at the very taste of the forbidden fruit. But he wasn’t. Grace overflowed onto the canvas of creation and reached out to pitiful men. Indeed, goodness continued to pour out even among thorns and thistles. Every good thing that was provided and is continually provided to sinful man after the point of rebellion serves as a witness that what the Psalmist is saying is very true.
“I have no good apart from you.”
More than that, I have no prayer of faith apart from you. It was God’s grace and goodness that even allowed for the gift in the first place. A Christian is completely reliant on the preservation of the Lord in every way.
This is both amazing and humbling.
The Psalmist then thinks of his fellow believers. He says:
“As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.”
If such things are true about God and his gift of faith and preservation, then one must see every fellow believer as a miracle and witness to this beautiful reality. How much of a delight it is to have saving faith yourself, but O, how wonderful it is to enjoy and delight in this faith with another! How beautiful it is for salvation to spread to other men and women who would otherwise have perished.
These truly are excellent ones.
And so, we ought to continually walk in a manner worthy of such glorious preservation and faith. We ought to love one another as men and women who survived the greatest disaster through a Savior of the greatest glory.
What a friend we have in Jesus, my friends.
Cling to Christ today.
What about people who seemed to believe and then walked away?
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2:19).
When someone who seemed to be a real believer walks away for good, it shows that the person never truly believed. This is a really difficult moment when it happens. Jesus describes the same instance in Matthew 13:20-21, with the Sower parable.
We are never given the ability to read the reality of other people's hearts, and we can't always tell the real from the false, yet we can continue to urge people on, pray for them, and continue to cling to Christ ourselves.
Study Questions
QUESTION 01
What does faith as a gift mean to you?
QUESTION 02
Is God preserving you something that gives you hope?
QUESTION 03
What believer can you message today to encourage them?
How To Cling Today
Cling to Christ today by asking and trusting him to preserve you in every way.
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