Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Good to have you back today. This week, we're looking at different

passages of scripture that reveal to us and remind us Christian men that we were born for battle.

Today we're going to look at just one verse from the 144th Psalm. It is entitled My Rock and My Fortress.

So let's read verse one. Blessed be the Lord, my rock,

who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. So I actually want to read it in the King

James Version 2 because I think it just sounds cool. Blessed be the Lord my strength, which

teacheth my hand to war and my fingers to fight. So this is one of the 73 Psalms that are traditionally attributed to David.

As with many of the Psalms of David, it reflects his experience as a warrior king.

And I mean, he faced a ton of very difficult adversaries during his time as king. So we have the

Philistines, the Amalekites, you know, he had internal rebels and then, you know, himself, obviously.

And the 144th Psalm echoes themes from an

earlier Psalm of David, which is Psalm 18. And this shows us that while writing Psalm 144, David seems

to be reflecting on the goodness and deliverance of God from his past up through that point in his life.

So Psalm 144 is a Psalm of personal praise, but it progresses

to eventually ask for prosperity and, you know, an end to hostilities and war. And so let me read

Psalm 144 one again, and then we'll break it down. Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands

for war and my fingers for battle. So blessed be the Lord. So blessed is a declaration

of praise. And to whom is the praise directed? The Lord. So the foundation, the grounding of the

psalm is in praise and gratitude towards the Lord. Then he says, my rock. So a rock is a symbol of stability and refuge.

Also, it's not lost on me that David, when he was but a young shepherd, used a single rock to kill

the great giant Philistine Goliath. So essentially, David is giving praise to the source of his

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