Wednesday, July 24, 2013

By Trust, God Is Your Peace

The Word of the Lord concerning security and delivery, procuring peace:
“Those who love me, I will deliver;
I will protect those who know my name.
When they call to me, I will answer them;
I will be with them in trouble,
I will rescue them and honor them.
With long life I will satisfy them,
and show them my salvation.”
— PSALM 91:14-16 (NRSV)
By trust we are won to the tremendous hope of salvation; God would deliver anyone from their calamity. All we need to do is do the simplest thing – that also seems to be the hardest: we surrender upon our human strength to redeem the strength of God in our weakness. Weakness is, hence, the invitation – the Presence of God ushered into our consciousness.
By trust, God is our peace. He has promised the same. As he has been faithful in delivering us in many ways we have not previously understood, even from within our disobedience. Yet, the faithful he saves ever more so – by many and various manifestations of spiritual rescue.
If we truly love God, we have saved ourselves for him, and this Lord of glory has gracious things stored and stowed for us. As we step by faith and not by sight we envision the glorious state of being rescued according to God’s will; the nuance of which is designed and decreed by the Lord himself.
Being rescued is not defined by human means, but by the means of the Almighty. So what might appear as a rescue to us will not translate into a rescue by God, and vice versa. We must yet learn to think like God thinks, and act so that we are not so surprised by life.
The best means by which we are rescued is by the provision of protection, for all those who love God – who will know his name; Father, Son, and Spirit.
When we call upon the Lord in our distress we will be answered, and we will know it when the answer comes. Even the perception of an absence of an answer is an answer. Much of the time God’s Word has already given us the template for how we are to live; God has spoken. The Lord has answered, in an eternal sense.
God is with us, as he says, in the affliction we find ourselves in, and, at every stage of our lives this applies.
The Lord has promised a guard of honour that would hedge us in within the bounds of our reconciliation.
***
By our trust, we know God and this Lord gifts us into peace. The more we take into account the truths of life – in his Word, by being humble, by loving reality – the more we drink of his purified streams of peace for all of our lives.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

1 comment:

  1. It's interesting (isn't it?) how much trust we put on these very sites - talking to people on the other side of the world who we have never met in person - sometimes opening out hearts to them - each time holding on to the faith and trust that it is God's plan that is being worked through.

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