94. Upholds
Psalm 37: 17, 24
For the arms of the wicked shall be broken:
But the Lord upholdeth the righteous.
Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down:
For the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.
The two kinds of people in the world from the Bible’s point of view are the righteous and the wicked, or, the believers and the unbelievers. The believers are the ones who are given great and precious promises. Here the promise is that the Lord will hold them up. He will break the strength of the unbeliever, but He will uphold the strength of the believer; he will not be broken. The believer will stumble and fall, even defeated, but he will not stay down and defeated, for the Lord will hold him up with his hand. The strength and power of God Himself will stand him upright and hold him upright.
It is to be expected that we as followers of Christ will stumble and fall from time to time, but the Lord will be there to pick us up and hold us up. In fact, the righteous may fall seven times a day, but they keep getting back up. When the believer falls into sin he does not stay there: he repents, turns to Jesus, receives forgiveness, gets up, gets back on the Way and keeps going upright and strong. This is the promise: even when we stumble and fall, get weak and fail, the Lord will be there to hold us up and set us going again.
The unbeliever, however, does not know how to get up again and may stay down for a long time. But even in times of trouble and in down times my Lord is there to uphold me with his hand.