There is something beautiful about someone who can look back over decades and still say, “Lord, You’ve been my hope since I was young.” Psalm 71:5 is the quiet testimony of a heart that has walked with God through many seasons and discovered that real security doesn’t come from health, strength, or success, but from a Person. This verse invites you to remember when you first began to trust Him—and to realize that the same God who held you then is holding you now.

Hope That Learns to Lean

When the psalmist says, “For You are my hope, O Lord GOD, my confidence from my youth” (Psalm 71:5), he’s not talking about a vague optimism; he’s talking about a learned dependence. From his earliest days, he had been turning—again and again—to the Lord as the One who comes through. Over time, that repeated leaning formed a reflex: when trouble hits, his heart doesn’t just panic; it runs to God. That’s what real hope does—it trains your soul where to go first.

Think back: when you were younger in the faith, God met you in ways you didn’t fully understand. Maybe you prayed clumsily, read your Bible inconsistently, but He still answered, guided, and comforted you. Those early stories weren’t small; they were God teaching you to lean. Even now, He calls you back to that simple, childlike trust Jesus praised, a trust that believes He is good, listens when you call, and keeps His word no matter how you feel or how things look.

Confidence That Outlives Circumstances

Circumstances change, bodies weaken, memories fade—but the psalmist’s confidence doesn’t retire. Why? Because it was never anchored in a season of life; it was anchored in the Lord Himself. Hebrews 6:19 says, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” An anchor does its best work when the storm hits and the waves rise. In the same way, God-designed hope proves its strength when everything else is being shaken.

This means your confidence can actually grow as life gets harder, not in spite of the trials but through them. Every disappointment becomes another line in the story of God’s faithfulness to you. You begin to say, “I’ve seen this before. I’ve been afraid before. And every time, He has held me.” Over years of walking with Him, “I hope He will” slowly turns into “I know He will,” not because you know the script, but because you know the Author.

Finishing With the Faith That Started You

Psalm 71 is the prayer of someone older, asking God not to forsake him when his strength is gone. And God has already answered that fear in His Word. Isaiah 46:4 says, “Even to your old age I will be the same, and even to your gray hairs I will carry you. I have made you, and I will bear you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” The God who began with you as a child has no intention of stopping halfway. His plan is to carry you across the finish line.

So today, don’t just remember how you started—choose how you will finish. Renew the simple commitments that marked your earliest days with Him: open His Word with expectancy, talk to Him honestly, obey quickly when He speaks. Let the younger you remind the older you that God has never failed you yet. And let the older you tell the younger you, “Stay with Him. He is worth every step.”

Lord, thank You for being my hope and confidence from my youth until now. Today, help me lean on You more deeply and obey You more quickly, so that my life bears clear witness that You alone are faithful and enough.

One of the serious weaknesses of present-day evangelicalism is the mechanical quality of its thinking. A utilitarian Christ has taken the place of the radiant Savior of other and happier times. This Christ is able to save, it is true, but He is thought to do so in a practical across-the-counter manner, paying our debt and tearing off the receipt like a court clerk acknowledging a paid-up fine. A bank-teller psychology characterizes much of the religious thinking in our little gospel circle. The tragedy of it is that it is truth without being all the truth.

If modern Christians are to approach the spiritual greatness of Bible saints or know the inward delights of the saints of post-biblical times, they must correct this imperfect view and cultivate the beauties of the Lord our God in sweet, personal experience. In achieving such a happy state, a good hymnbook will help more than any other book in the world except the Bible itself.

A great hymn embodies the purest concentrated thoughts of some lofty saint who may have long ago gone from the earth and left little or nothing behind him except that hymn. To read or sing a true hymn is to join in the act of worship with a great and gifted soul in his moments of intimate devotion. It is to hear a lover of Christ explaining to his Savior why he loves Him; it is to listen in without embarrassment on the softest whisperings of undying love between the bride and the heavenly Bridegroom.

He, giveth power to the faint. . . . Even the youths shall faint and be weary . . . but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint. - Isaiah 40:29-31.

Earth knows no independent strength. All earthly power is limited in range and duration, and by the very law of its being is steadily tending to weakness.

But though that has a sad side, it has also a grand and blessed one. Man’s needs are the open mouth - if I may say so - into which God puts His gifts. The more sad and pathetic the condition of feeble humanity by contrast with the strength, the immortal strength of God, the more wondrous that grace and power of His, which is not contented with hanging there in the Heavens above us, but bends right down to bless us and to turn us into its own likeness. The low earth stretches, grey and sorrowful, flat and dreary, beneath the blue, arched heaven, but the heaven stoops to encompass, ay! to touch it. " He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength."

All creatural life digs its own grave. " The youths shall faint with the weakness of physical decay, the weakness of burdened hearts, the weakness of consciously distracted natures, the weakness of agonizing conscience. They shall be weary with the weariness of dreary monotony, of uncongenial tasks, of long continued toil, of hope deferred, of disappointed wishes, of bitter disenchantment’s, of the learning the lesson that all is vanity, the weariness that creeps over us all as life goes on." All these are the occasions for the inward strength of God to manifest itself even in us; according to the great word that He spoke once and means ever: "My grace is sufficient for thee, and My strength is made perfect in weakness."

Isaiah did not know - or, if he did, he knew it very dimly - what every Christian child knows: that the highest revelation of the power of Him that " fainteth not, neither is weary," is found in Him who, "being weary with His journey, sat thus on the well," and, being worn out with the long work and excitement of a hard day, slept the sleep of the laboring man on the wooden pillow of the little boat amid the whistle of the tempest and the dash of the waves.

And Isaiah did not know - or, if he did, he knew it very dimly and as from afar - that the highest fulfillment of His own word - "He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength "- would be found when a gentle voice from amidst the woes of humanity said: "Come unto Me! all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest Take My yoke upon you; and ye shall find rest unto your souls."