Friday, January 10, 2014

When God Is For You, Who Can Be Against?


He who will not sleep,
Nor betray the Everlasting Covenant,
This Lord takes care of his sheep,
So they don’t need to fear his judgment.
“I will clothe his enemies with shame,
but the crown on his head will be resplendent.”
— Psalm 132:18 (NIV)
We should not, as Christians, fear a single thing, but we, as flesh-ridden persons, will inevitably fall for many subtle deceptions.
God is for the Christian – for the person who has repented of their rejection of the Spirit. They, who have turned, and who have genuinely sought the Lord, seeking him the best they can, have no reason for feeling inadequate in this foreign world.
It is a foreign world for basically anyone who is honest.
And where we can take any of our lack to God – all of our lack – can be healed in the moment. What this means is, one moment at a time, we can learn to accept it, and feel the Spirit of the Lord reassure us.
When we stay with an idea of God that this Lord of Glory and all creation is for us, and when that is the case nothing can be against us, we are able to meet every challenge of life and we are able to digest it. Such knowledge makes the circumstance no easier. Making it easier is not the point. The point is God wants us to experience the unadulterated exhilaration in knowing that the thing we feel is impossible is achievable.
God is not going to flip the world upside down just so we can have our dreams met, but what God will do is he will be our Defender when our backs are against the wall.
So God will be for us when we need him, but God is no puppet-string puller about the things we want. We cannot coerce God, and we wouldn’t want to if we knew the Lord’s agenda for his creation. When we need God and we are prepared to follow him as a disciple should, the Lord will not sleep and he will not betray us. God seeks his followers.
***
He who will not sleep,
Nor betray the Everlasting Covenant,
This Lord takes care of his sheep,
So they don’t need to fear his judgment.
Utterly reliable is God in the eternal realm of things. He takes care of us, his sheep; those who have hearts bent toward doing what is right and just and fair.
© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

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