"I cling to your Word. Lord don't let me be put to shame.....I faint with longing for your salvation but I have put my hope in Your Word. My eyes are straining to see Your promises come true....restore my life again, just as You promised." Psalm 119:31, 81-82, 107
The 119th Psalm is a long cry of desperation. Have you and I ever really known such desperation? Really known it? We may have felt desperate, but in our hearts and minds, was there still some part that thought if He didn't come through, we would somehow find a way out of it all? I'm not so sure but that a great deal of our prayer is of this type. We may not be conscious of it, but the attitude is there. We take something to Him, and feel that we are seeking Him alone, yet lurking in the background is "Plan B." What we'll do if He doesn't answer us. Or more correctly, doesn't answer us in the way and time that we think He should. We may feel desperate, but not so much that we're not also at work on a way to bring about our own deliverance using the means at hand. After all, He helps those who help themselves, right? What? That's not in His Word? He never said any such thing? How could this be? I mean, everybody has a Plan B don't they? Plan A is that we look to Him, but we've always got at least partial sight on plan B too. If God won't deliver us, we'll just have to find a way to deliver ourselves. This is the reason so few of us really behold His glory in not only our desperate situations, but our day to day living as well. We're geniuses when it comes to putting together Plan B's.
I've a friend who says that sometimes, the last impediment to His miraculous breakthrough into our lives and need is our willingness to surrender the possibilities of what we could do to make the situation better. To rescue ourselves. I believe we, the professing church, are being brought to this place....and at high speed. The disintegration of our culture is accelerating. We have found many ways to hide from that fact, even deny it, but it is happening anyway. The situation is not getting desperate, it is. All the props we've been depending upon are being literally kicked out from under us. The foundations we've built are collapsing. Sinking sand is all around us, and in too many cases, underneath us. Our ability to control things lessens by the day. But we do retain control in one place; and that is the choice of who we will depend upon in this day. Who, and what will be our Foundation, our Hope and Help, and our Deliverer and Savior? Him, or that which is not Him.
When all we have to cling to is His Word, it's then we'll find that it's only His Word that can bring us out and into His Life. When we fall to our knees before Him, we will find it the quickest route to His lifting us up and out of the mire. The way up is down. The way out is to allow Him full reign within. And despite the world's best efforts, we'll never be put to shame. We may grow faint, but He'll strengthen us. Our eyes may strain to see the fulfillment of His promise, but we will see His salvation. The time and place will be His to choose, but He will do so. He will restore. He will rebuild. He will renew. As He defines it, and not us. All just as He promised. Can we, can you, surrender all the Plan B's and look to Him who is not a plan at all, but a Person. A Person who has promised. And His promises still are, and always will be, "Yes and Amen."
Blessings,
Pastor O
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