How can believers have confidence?
Text: Psalm 11
Hosts:
Vicki Hitzges
Brian French
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Kristin Norman
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2025 CrossTalk Global
Kristin: Last year, Gallup reported that church attendance has declined in every religion in America. Two decades ago, an average of 42% of US adults attended religious services every week or nearly every week. A decade ago, the figure fell to 38%, and it is currently at 30%. This decline is largely driven by the increase in the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation, 9% in 2000-2003 versus 21% in 2021-2023, almost all of whom do not attend services regularly. In fact, 57% of Americans are seldom or never in religious service attendance. For Christians, this can be disheartening, even scary. But it doesn't have to be. How can believers be confident when outnumbered by the ungodly? Today, while Dr. Kent is away, join Vicki Hitskiss, Brian French and Nathan Norman as they discover how King David found confidence when he was outnumbered in Psalm 11. Welcome to Crosstalk, a Christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible, but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life, into all our lives. I'm Kristin Norman. Today, Brian French, Vicki Hitskiss, and Nathan Norman, take a look at the Psalms. If you have a Bible handy, turn to Psalm 11 as we join their discussion.
Nathan: Brian, welcome to the show. We hear you in the beginning and the end, but rarely do we get to have you in the body of the show. So it's great to have you on board.
Vicki: It is good to have you.
Brian: Thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. It's kind of feels like I'm pinch hitting for Babe Ruth. So no pressure, but I'm looking forward to talking about what we're talking about today.
Nathan: Excellent. Okay, so Vicky and Brian, I know our personal lives are surrounded with believers, but in the broader North American culture, does it feel like non believers outnumber followers of Christ? And if so, how? How?
Vicki: Oh, I think absolutely if, if you watch TV or watch, if you're addicted to your phone and you see television clips, anything, you see what society passes as normal in sexual situations. People are just. I, I was just amazed after the last election how people as they should care, but care so deeply about politics because they just feel like their identity and their future is just so intimately wrapped up with who's going to lead the country.
Brian: Yeah, I've seen that on just even my own social media abstract watching that someone will post a little bit of news or something and say, this is something that's important to me. And someone will immediately challenge them and say, hey, where'd you read that? What's the source on that? I don't trust you. I don't trust your data. And it. It's spilling out from social media into everyday lives. Well, that's good for you, but that's not good for me. And they become less trusting, especially if, you know, they post an article from a source that they have been told not to like. And that is making people just more polarized, period. That one of the things that they're willing to do is here are my goal posts. And if you don't agree with my goal posts, I will have nothing to do with you. And I've seen scholars and writers talking about, just, even over the last election cycle, if you are cutting off family members for the way that they're voting, you're making a major mistake. So that polarization of politics and trust is just separating right down to families. So it is wild what's happening on that level with that kind of polarization.
Nathan: Yeah, yeah, I get that sense too, that there are a lot more non believers, or at least ungodly characteristics out there, even within the church, unfortunately, than.
Brian: And it's normalized, right?
Nathan: Yes, yes. Where people will celebrate for cutting off your mom or dad or your kids because they voted, quote, unquote, the wrong way, or for us to have biblical sexual morality. Marriage is between one man and one woman. Sexuality is a good gift from God to be enjoyed within the confines of marriage between a man and a woman. Now we are the bigots and we are the haters and we're immoral for believing that. So you do get this sense of, wow, we are surrounded by the ungodly. I do find some encouragement that as much as this is a cultural shift that we are feeling right now, and as uncomfortable as it is, this is not a new phenomenon. In Psalm 11, which is attributed to King David, we see this exact sort of same thing. We don't know what his exact situation was that he was facing, but he was surrounded by ungodly people. And while he was surrounded by ungodly people, this is how he responded.
Vicki: Let me read that. Psalm 11. He said, I have taken refuge in the Lord. How can you say to me, escape to the mountains like a bird, for look, the wicked string bows. They put their arrows on bowstrings to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart. When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?
Nathan: Okay, let's do something a little bit different. Because psalms are poetry and songs and something I've personally found useful is identifying the emotions of each section or movement of the psalm. So here David starts out declaring that he has taken refuge in the Lord, even while others are telling him to freak out. They're saying, when the foundations are destroyed, the foundations of society are destroyed. What can the righteous do? You can't do anything. Freak out, run, head for the hills. So I've given Vicki and Brian charts that list emotions, which I find useful in defining emotions, because at least for me, when I try to define my emotions. How are you feeling, Nathan? I have three options. I am happy, I am sad, I am angry.
Brian: I have fine and I don't want to talk about it. You have even less huge emotional range in my life. Huge.
Nathan: And so what I've discovered is looking at lists of emotions, I can better identify what I'm feeling. And also when going through the psalms, I can better identify what the emotions are being evoked within those psalms. And so for the listeners at home, I've put some links in the show notes that you can find some lists of emotions if this would be helpful for you in your devotional life. But for us, let's look at this text and Vicki, Brian, what emotions does this section evoke?
Vicki: Well, I see three. I'm not sure that I'm right about this. What do you think, Brian? I've taken refuge in the Lord. So that's, to me, that's comfort. He's explaining his comfort, but then he goes to a different emotion. The reason he's taken comfort is because he says, how can you say to me, escape to the mountains for look, the wicked string bows. They put their arrows on bowstrings to shoot from the shadows. That's terror. He sees all this terror around him, all this bad stuff happening. Yet he started out saying, I've taken refuge in the Lord. And then he goes to when the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?
Brian: I think you're right. I saw the same thing. I think that David was first approached by someone and said, don't you see what's happening? There's cats and dogs living together. It's mass hysteria, right? But it's a living, legit need. I'm. I'm making light of it, but this is a legit issue where they think that they have to flee. And the answer is, why would you ever have to flee where you are? And that that means to me that you don't feel safe. So if you've ever had to get out of your home because you don't feel Safe. That's the kind of terror that this person is feeling. I think. I think Vicki got it right. I completely agree with that. And it's time to get out of Dodge. But, David, his ultimate response here is, as you said, I've taken refuge in the Lord, and I'm surprised that that understanding of taking refuge in the Lord isn't influencing your view on this person's view on their circumstances. I think he's feeling amazement that he's surprised at this and they're feeling. Because he doesn't feel the way that they do about this really dire circumstance that they're facing.
Nathan: Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it? Right, so there are people saying to him in the second part of verse one through verse three, like Vicki said, they're terrified. Like, oh, whatever's happening, we don't know the situation. But the ungodly are everywhere. This is awful. You know, the whole foundation of society is crumbling apart. But he starts off with this confidence and it seems crazy, right, because you have a fire alarm go off in your house and you say it's time to exit the house, right?
Vicki: Run, run.
Nathan: Right. You don't have confidence and say, I'm not leaving. I have taken refuge in the Lord, so I don't need to listen to this fire alarm. So let's bring it a little more to the contemporary time. So when have you seen someone have absolute confidence when they absolutely should not?
Brian: Sports fans. Oh, sports fans. I am a fan of most Toronto sports teams and I have been since I. I grew up in Northern Ontario and then I moved to southern Ontario, Canada, for school. And of course it's dominated the Toronto sports scenes, dominate that area, and we hardly win anything. But every year we are just confident that this is our year.
Vicki: This is going to be the year.
Brian: This is going to be the year. And then conversely, it's not just sports fans, but, like, people who feel absolute confidence, like talk show hosts who say, this is absolutely what's happening behind the scenes and this. And it's just an opinion. It's just. But that kind of talking head, radio, media person that just has this absolute ironclad opinion that turns out to be absolutely wrong. Yet it dominates the way we look at sports now. It dominates the way we look at news now because we want, you know, got to get that expert's opinion. And they're just so, so confident. I'm like, really? You're coming across like you're absolutely confident, like the weatherman is confident. And then all of a sudden they're Wrong. And they go, oh, yeah, I was wrong. But normally I'm right. And they tell you the weather for the next couple of days.
Nathan: Right, right. I can attest to this because if you follow Brian on X, formerly known as Twitter, he will talk about the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team.
Brian: Don't bring that up today. They just didn't.
Nathan: Vicki, have you seen somebody have absolute confidence when they absolutely should not?
Vicki: Pretty much. When I was growing up, we had this little bitty Maltese dogs. And I don't know if you've ever seen a Maltese dog, but they look like powder puffs with legs. In fact, we name the dog Puff. And every day after work, my dad would get Puff and they'd go to Lake Highlands Junior High and they'd run around the track around her. And that dog lived to run around the track with my dad. He loved it. He would just wiggle and shake and his tail would go. He loved that. Well, one day they were running around and this great big teeth bearing dog saw Puff and thought, whoa, snack, dinner. And went after Puff. And it terrif as it should have. It terrified Puff. And Puff made a beeline for my dad. And my dad thought, whoa, whoa, I'm not.
Brian: What am I gonna do?
Vicki: Yeah, I'm not sure I wanna save you here. But Puff was absolutely certain my dad was safety. And that was absolute confidence. Swear it wasn't absolute.
Nathan: Was your dad okay?
Vicki: He was okay and so was the dog. The dog left when he saw my dad. But it wasn't an absolute surety that that was a safe.
Nathan: That dog probably could have taken. Taken your dad out if you wanted to.
Vicki: He could have.
Nathan: Yeah. So David here, he's got this incredible level of confidence, like a tiny little puffball dog and. Or like, you know, Canadian sports fans. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Toronto sports fans, let's be more specific. So he has this incredible level of confidence. Why? Well, let's look at the next movement in verse 4.
Brian: The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord his throne is in heaven. His eyes watch. His gaze examines everyone. The Lord examines the righteous, but he hates the wicked and those who love violence. Let him rain burning coals and sulfur on the wicked. Let a scorching wind be the portion in their cup.
Nathan: Okay, this is fun. What emotions is David evoking in this part of the psalm?
Brian: It seems to me that he's demonstrating an incredible trust that God is in a position where he is above this, he is beyond this. And if he decides to act, look out, because he is going to act in a way that demonstrates he's in charge, that he has authority, and that the wicked will not, will not advance in their schemes and they will not be successful, that he will judge.
Vicki: And when you say, hey, you're talking about God here.
Brian: Talking about God. Yeah, yeah.
Nathan: What do you think, Vicki? Other emotions.
Vicki: It, it takes a lot of confidence to believe that when, when you have a person that you really think is wicked that they're violent and you leave that to God to be righteous and you don't step in and retaliate. That takes confidence.
Nathan: Yeah, yeah, it does. He's very aggressive here too. Let him rain burning coals and sulfur on the wicked. Let a scorching wind be the portion in their cup letter. But the scorching wind that ruins crops and lives, let that be their destiny. Wow. There's this anticipation. God is going to bring judgment. So David is saying, yeah, God sees all of this and he is going to punish bad behavior. Yes, I might suffer right now. Yes, I am suffering right now, but he is going to come and he is going to punish bad behavior in the future. So in what other areas of life do we practice? Maybe self control to avoid future consequences?
Brian: I think for me, I think just personally, we people who are wise demonstrate financial self control. It's a discipline factor because they see that the thing they want now might cost them what they really need in the future. And so you see that on a basic human level where people will set aside a portion of income in order to make sure that the later years when they're not working, they're being taken care of. It's not wise to trust in, you know, someone else to take care of you, make sure that you're setting apart those things. Dieting is another area where I would love to eat just all the chocolate chip cookies in the house. Right. And sometimes I like to think that on your birthday, everything's calorie free. That's just my wishful thinking, though. If I do eat all of the cookies in the house, I pay for that with, you know, lethargy and energy and I'm not taking care of my body.
Nathan: But even then, the problem with that thought, though, is then it's calorie free on Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day and Christmas and Easter, you know, all those times, it's just, it just never Harbor Day.
Kristin: Yeah.
Brian: That'S true. That's true. So it's definitely a slippery slope of calorie intake. But there's also relational boundaries. There's been some Research that says one thing that couples need to do, husbands and wives, as you kind of mentioned earlier, husbands and wives need to make sure that they're investing in their friendship and that they need to have a deep friendship and not just a deep passion. Because if you develop a deep, deep friendship with others and don't have that in your own marriage, it can actually separate and cause a boundary issue where you're forging these attachments that become, you know, unwise and unhealthy and just sort of recognizing that and say, it's not me, can't be friends with people. But to have a really deep friendship with your spouse and knowing when to say, no, I can't do that with you. I'm doing, you know, this with my wife or my husband and something like that. The other area, I think that is where we practice self control. Just coming back to the cookies again is when there's one cookie left in the package and there's more than one person in the house and thinking, no, I'm not going to eat that, even though I want it because I want someone else to enjoy it, I want them to have it. And we do that for our kids all the time. Right. There's things that we go without because we want our kids to have better than we did. I think that's some of the things in just that self control, where we say, I want something better later, so I will have discipline now.
Vicki: Oh, there's all kinds of examples. Sexual self control. You don't want your marriage to blow up. And along the lines you're talking about, Brian, physical self control, you make yourself get up and work out. You don't want to be broken down and heavy and all, you know, whatever all comes with that. How you eat what you eat, not just so you don't eat too much, but you make yourself eat the kale.
Brian: Well, let's not go to kale automatically. There's got to be other vegetables we can go to before we.
Vicki: Or the salmon or the whatever. But there's just lots of areas of self control. You make yourself clean the house when you don't want to throw things out, when you have a hoarder tendency, maybe that kind of thing.
Nathan: Yeah, so that's kind of David's image here is, yes, things are bad, but eventually God is going to bring justice into the wicked's lives. And so discipline yourself to avoid consequences. But it's not just negative. He doesn't end us here on a negative note. We don't just live a righteous life to Avoid consequences. Instead, David says this and closes the psalm out. In verse seven, he says, for the.
Vicki: Lord is righteous, he loves righteous deeds. The upright will see his face.
Nathan: So when David wrote see his face, he is referring to a loyal citizen's right to come before his or her king. He's writing about seeing the Lord's favor in defending and delivering them. He's writing about one day meeting the Lord face to face and realizing that the true prize isn't treasure, it isn't comfort, it isn't wealth or fame. It's Him, It's God. And as Christians, we understand a fuller understanding of this. It's seeing our Lord and Savior face to face one day. Last time I'm going to ask this question. What emotions is David invoking in this final part of the psalm?
Vicki: He's trying to invoke comfort that no matter what you're going through now, it's not always going to be like this and someday it's going to be wonderful.
Brian: I agree with that. I think he's incredibly optimistic that this isn't just a, you know, a wishful dream that I hope I can retire. Well, this is him saying, I know I have a God who sees righteousness, who judges wickedness, and I. I want to make sure that I'm on the right side of that. But in that process, I get to enjoy him and I'm going to see him at the end. He is going to rescue, he is going to judge, and that is an makes him optimistic for the future in a way that he's not overreacting to the circumstances. And, you know, viewing God through His circumstances, he's doing it the other way around. I know who God is, and because of that knowledge, I view my circumstances through who he is and how he treats me.
Nathan: Yeah, excellent. Wonderful. So how can we be confident when outnumbered by the ungodly like we are today? By knowing the Lord will repay everyone according to their deeds. For those who sin, he brings justice. But for those who trust in God, we get to see his face. We experience Him. As Christians, we have a fuller understanding of this text, as I just said, is we get to see Jesus. And I think this is a promise in this life, too. Maybe you're not going to see him with your eyes, but you'll experience him through the body of Christ, through the local church, and through the community of believers. Okay, nerd alert time. So I was giving Brian a little bit of a hard time because of his love of Toronto sports, but that's cool. I mean, not great teams but that's cool. I'm not cool. I've never been cool. I'm a comic book fan, and among my favorite comics is this comic book character, the Green Lantern. He has, like, energy that shoots out of his ring and. And controls. Controls what they look like and everything. Don't pay attention to the movie that came out some time ago. A few years ago, they added a bunch of colors to this fictional story, so the whole rainbow of colors. And they all have different powers and different abilities, including the Blue Lantern and their leader they named Saint Walker. Now, this isn't a Christian who wrote this, but this character, he wields the color of hope. And all the time, in the deepest, darkest despair, when things look the bleakest for our heroes, he's always saying this phrase. He says, all will be well. And that is a great line. I remember reading that and thinking, this is amazing. So to the point where I said, I've got to find out where this came from. Because for a comic book character, this is little more than wishful thinking. He doesn't have any external evidence that all will be well. He's just hoping that it will. Or wishful thinking at best. So I did some digging, and I found out that the line was borrowed from the poet T.S. eliot, who borrowed it from a medieval prayer warrior named Julian of Norwich, where he said, all will be well. And now, knowing as a Christian saying that that is a phenomenal phrase. And I'll use it in my prayer life to remind myself and to remind others, no matter how dark it gets, no matter how difficult it is because of the risen Lord, all will be well. We can have confidence when outnumbered by the ungodly by knowing the Lord will repay everyone according to their deeds. Culture changes, and we often feel we have no power to stop it. But our confidence is in the one who controls and sees all things. So as society shifts and changes, don't be apathetic, don't be afraid. Be confident in the Lord. All will be well.
Kristin: There will never be a time. Christians are not outnumbered by ungodly people, because that is true. How can believers feel confident in an ungodly world? Justice is coming. Psalm tells us, the Lord will repay everyone according to their deeds. The crosstalk podcast is a production of crosstalk Global equipping biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more about this educational nonprofit organization, please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org. this month, we're training biblical communicators in Panama and Kenya. And next Month. We're launching a new educational cohort group in Southern California. Help us empower the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click Donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also support this show by rating it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you find it. Be sure to listen next Friday as we continue our discussion in the Word of God and discover how to go deeper in our relationship with God. You won't want to miss it.
Brian: For Christians, this can be disheartening, even scary. But it doesn't have to be. How can believers be confident when outnumbered by the unwashed, pagan, ungodly people in the country?
Vicki: Preach it, Brian.
Brian: Unwashed, uncircumcised, unwashed masses, the heathens, the cohort of people that are out there. No.
Nathan: Right, right. I can attest to this if you follow Brian on X, formerly known as Twitter. He will talk about the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team.
Brian: We don't bring that up today. They just, they just didn't. You can't, you can't put this in the podcast. But I am livid that they have a top 10 player in the league that they had to resign and they did it. Now he's going to go to free age anyways. Yes, you can cut that part out. But you had. You had to bring it up, didn't you? I was trying to be good. I remember that. I remember the Green Lantern. What is it? In brightest day and blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. That one where he charges up the ring and he gets like a 24 hour battery on it.
Nathan: Those who worships evil might be where my power Green Lanterns lie.
Brian: Yeah, that's it. That's the only part I remember.
Nathan: Vicky's just.
Brian: Yeah.
Nathan: What have I walked into?
Vicki: Yeah, that's not my thing. You know what I was thinking, though? It's not necessarily good that the Lord's going to repay according to deeds. It's not like I have this sparkling, crystal clear life.
Nathan: Yes, but I mean, broader understanding. Certainly as New Testament Christians, we know that we're judicially declared righteous because of the blood of Jesus, because of his sacrifice and our trust in him. But even for David, from that context, he knows that he doesn't have a sparkling life, but he.
Vicki: When did he say all this stuff? Before or after Bathsheba?
Nathan: There's no markers and there's no markers elsewhere. So we don't know. But there's a huge difference between people who say, I'm trying to follow God and I fail and I don't want to follow God or I'm going to pretend to follow God and do whatever the heck I want. Right. That is the dividing line between wicked and unwicked. It's kind of the go to that I'll often use is when you find out people with addictions, whether it's to alcohol or pornography or whatever, you can't work with people who are talking to you because, you know, their wife, wife found out or their boss found out, and now they're just trying to check mark a box. I got to talk to the pastor. Right. They're not interested. They just want the consequences to end. But the people who, the people who say, I hate this and I don't have the power to stop. Right. I know this is wrong and I can't stop. That's somebody you can work with because their heart is in the right place. And that's kind of where David's getting at here, I think is.
Brian: Yeah, and I like that because I think the text here is someone saying, why would you take refuge in the Lord? It's not working in this sort of imaginary conversation I think David's having with whoever comes to him and says, you need to run. You need to get out of here because you think you're safe. Your house is on fire. Get out, run. This is not. No, I know I'm being attacked. I know this is happening, but I've got God on my side and this isn't wishful thinking. It's not. I'm praying. I'm just praying the cancer is going away and I'm not going to the doctor and getting it treated. He legitimately knows that God is evaluating. And I think part of that application, though, is where do I land? Am I saying I trust in God, but when it comes, push comes to shove, where am I actually putting my trust? And I love what you said earlier, Vicki, that when someone truly wicked attacks you, that he doesn't feel the need to, you know, get retaliate. Yeah, I gotta get my posse together and I gotta make sure I'm posting the right stuff on social media. How dare you say these things about me? And don't you, you know, etc. He just says, no, God. God will vindicate me. So you can imagine a place in his life where his kids are trying to take the kingdom from him. And he's like, nope, I know God's got me. And he did have to run eventually. But you can imagine scenarios in David's life and ministry. It's early enough in the Psalms. I do wonder sometimes if he wrote this and then still struggled with Bathsheba afterwards. Still struggled. In these moments of, gosh, there were times when I discounted what God does to the wicked. I discounted how he looks after the righteous. And I took matters into my own hands. And how devastating this is. Like, I wonder where. I mean, this. This is a psalm that you'd sing in. In the tabernacle and on the way up to Jerusalem. And so. And so imagine, you know, you wrote this song, so they're singing it, and then you made choices later, and you're like, I don't want people to think about this. That so? But, yeah, this imaginary conversation he's having with people where people are saying, gosh, don't you know how bad it is? I can't be righteous. We have to get out of here. It's not going to work. It's not going to protect us. People are going to destroy us. And he says, no, no, God's got us. Let's make sure we're right with him. Seems to be that application.