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I came desperate to my Bible this morning, in need of mediation. My vehement cry... "If I have found grace in Thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord I pray Thee go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Thine inheritance! (Ex. 34:9)
The word of God replied, "Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence, He will come and save you. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth; it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." (Is. 35:4, 55:10-11)
"Out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you."(2 Cor. 2:4)
But you must "spend and be spent, though the more abundantly you love, the less you be loved." (2 Cor 12:15)
"Now unto Him that is able to do exceedingly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
As we go through The Truth Project at church, we are asking ourselves, "Do you really believe, that what you believe, is really real?" Why is any doubt allayed?
When my youngest son was born he had dimples, and not your average cheek or chin dimples, he had dimples on the tip of his nose! Who could have imagined such a thing?! I would often look at him and think of the philosophers who have proposed the possibility that the world around us is a product of our own vivid imagination. Those dimples in his nose where my proof of the absurdity of these claims. I had been to graphic arts school and had also been a witness to my lack of imagination. Nowhere in the far recesses of my brain did I hold the slightest capacity to conjure up those precious dimples, let alone the rest of his beautiful face.
Nor could I or any man create this relationship I have with my Lord. People accuse us of using our religion as a crutch, claiming we can’t face the struggles of everyday life without this divine purpose beyond the world we live in, and to tell you the truth, I can accept that. Part of growing as a Christian is accepting more and more every day that I can do nothing apart from Him. What these scoffers don’t get is that those crutches come in the same form as my sons dimples.
“Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the unchangeableness of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two unchangeable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast.” (Heb. 6:17-19)
God is the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, regardless of my expectations of Him. When I close my Bible, my comfort has come from its words and wisdom yes, but more importantly it comes from the knowledge that I could have never brought those verses together without the divine intervention of God. He not only directs me to His words but my own words as well. How could I ever imagine what His message to me is to be when I can’t even find the words to form my own prayers?
For the word of God is alive, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Heb. 4:12)
When you go to God expecting His promise of rescue and justification, and He replies that you must spend and be spent, though the more abundantly you love, the less you be loved, where is the comfort in that? I may weep over His promise that it is going to get worse before it gets better, but I joy in the knowledge that He is steadfast, unchanging, and I can really believe, that what I believe, is really real.
