Six years ago, Scott and I experienced a near car crash that probably would have killed us. Speeding down a back country road, we came upon a slow-moving hay truck. Scott whipped around to pass. Without warning the truck began to turn down a long dirt driveway. That turn put us in the path of disaster. It happened so fast.

The hay truck driver never even saw us. Not till the near accident was all but over.
To avoid a high speed collision, Scott whipped the steering wheel, sending us sideways. Our SUV tipped on two wheels, righted itself by an unseen force, then sped down the long dirt driveway a hair’s breath away from the hay truck. It still amazes me that we avoided that accident.

When it ended, we sat there shaken in our car in a cloud of dust. I keep a Bible and a daily devotional in our SUV’s glove compartment. All I wanted was to hear from God. With trembling hands, I pulled out the devotional first. The day’s entry read: “For he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone” Psalm 91:11.

Picking up the Bible, I then read Psalm 91 to Scott as we slowly got back on the road. I believe that day angels protected us from the accident.

When I first became saved, I would sometimes awake in the night sensing evil in the room. A strange prayer would run through my mind, holy words slipping out under my heaving breath almost on their own accord. I knew the prayer originated from my Catholic upbringing. All those readings in church for three decades. My subconscious must have tucked specific words away, and when I was scared, they would rise on their own.

There came a time when the nightmares became so bad that I sought help. I was still practicing Catholicism at the time so I visited several priests. Both men of the collar told me the devil was not real.

I didn’t believe them.

A friend of mine had been a serious Christian all her life. So I asked her if the devil could walk into my bedroom in the middle of the night.

“It’s probably a demon,” she said. “There’s only one devil and he can’t be in more than one place at a time. But there are lots of demons. You need to see my pastor. He knows all about spiritual warfare.”

“What is spiritual warfare?” I asked. I’d never heard of such a thing.

“Angels and demons are real on this earth. There is a battle going on for each and every soul. God’s army are the angels. The devil oversees the demons.”

So I went to visit her pastor. He didn’t look at me like I was crazy when I told him about the devil in my room. While talking with him, I shared that sometimes I’d wake up in the presence of evil saying this unfamiliar prayer that brought great comfort.

“What is it?” he asked.

So I recited some of the words.

“That’s Psalm 91. The Psalm of Protection,” said the helpful pastor.

After leaving the pastor’s office, I went home and flipped open my Bible. Sure enough, there it was: Psalm 91. I was amazed that in my sleep those words would come to me even though I was unfamiliar with the Bible back then. I liked Psalm 91 so much, I memorized it.

Fast forward a number of years. It’s easy to get complacent when all is well. I hadn’t read or spoken Psalm 91 in quite awhile. Then seemly out of the blue, our family hit a patch of difficulties. I’d grown so comfortable that it didn’t occur to me to break out Psalm 91 to fight the battles coming from all directions. While sharing my troubles with a friend in our Bible study, he said, “I have just the book for you.” The next day he brought me over Psalm 91: Real-life Stories of God’s Shield of Protection by Peggy Joyce Ruth. I read the book in two days and jumped back into a daily reading of Psalm 91.

Then I began to study it. Using Charles H. Spurgeon’s The Treasury of David, I’ve discovered that actually Psalm 91 is attributed to Moses. That information was new to me. I thought King David wrote the psalm. I also learned that Psalm 91 is not a promise to all believers. Only those who continually dwell in God’s presence are afforded the blanket of protection Psalm 91 offers.

To continually dwell with God is not an easy thing, but I noticed something that recently inspired me in my walk with the Lord. Down the road from us is river land. Towering oaks. Tall grass. Vines wrapping the river banks. Here is where the sheep graze in summer. And with them, the faithful shepherd. As well as four diligent dogs. This in 2011. There is no modern way to guard sheep. At night the shepherd pens his sheep and sleeps right beside them in a little camp trailer. During the day, he stands with the sheep keeping them safe. As long as the sheep don’t wander off, they are protected. The dogs are constantly circling, fending off predators. This is the secret place of the Most High talked about in Psalm 91: never leave the Shepherd’s side.