He is FOR me!

Hey all! Hope your day is good. Mine is great! I'm off from work today and I just finished up some quiet time w/ the Lord and I absolutely cannot help but share my study with you from today. My quiet times with Him are very personal, but today, I feel that He wants me to pass on what He spoke to me this morning. This will take you some time to read through, but I'm trusting that you'll be encouraged by it. Print it out, read on your lunch break, do whatever you have to do. This particular study is taking me through the "Psalms of Ascent" and during these beginning stages of my study, I'm having to learn that before I can freely move forward in my journey with the Lord, I must constantly be reminded that He is for me and that He has rescued me (Psalm 124: 2-3). Something that I also read last night greatly ties in with what I'm learning today. I purchased the book "The Shack" this weekend - apparently it's all the "rave" right now. I've not actually started the book yet, but last night I did read the reviews at the beginning of the book and this statement from a gentlemen really stood out to me..."God never leaves us where He finds us, unless we insist." One of the first statements in my Bible study this morning is this, "I often reflect on how God delivered me from myself as much as from Satan." So, there you go. Read on!

"Imagine standing on a battlefield all alone facing an angry army of 1,000 men, each breathing torturous threats. Suddenly you feel the earth pound beneath your feet like the hoofbeats of 10,000 horsemen. Your heart nearly melts with fear as you prepare yourself for the ever-mounting foe. Then you realize it wasn't 10,000 horsemen after all. It was one. Your gaze lifts higher as you try to focus on His face with the sun in your eyes. He looks 100 feet tall atop His stallion, and His very presence emanates authority. He is stunningly beautiful. Staggeringly powerful. His horse gallops onto the battlefield, kicking up the earth. The rider firmly pulls the reins and brings His horse to a halt right beside you. The horsemen then looks down at you and says, 'Proceed into battle, mighty warrior. I am on your side.'"

"One man of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the Lord your God who fights for you, just as He promised you." (Joshua 23:10)

"When we call upon His name, God promises New Testament believers that same kind of power and victory in the far more terrifying battles of the spiritual realms. He didn't just promise we'd be conquerors. He promised we'd be more than conquerors. Christ will never take us into a battle we cannot win. We would have to choose defeat against our new nature. Why aren't we living with that kind of confidence? If I were a betting woman (something my grandmother always used to say), I'd wager a small fortune on the validity of this statement:

Regardless of how long we've been Christians and how deeply we've studied God's Word, most of us don't realy believe down in the marrow of our bones that God is entirely, wholeheartedly, and unwaveringly on our side.

We live most of our lives unconvinced that God is really for us. We have little trouble picturing ourselves on God's side, but for the life of us we can't picture God stooping down enough to be on ours. Even though we'll say things and sing things to the contrary, we live as if we believe down in the hidden places of our hearts and minds that God at best tolerates us. And lucky we are at that!

We may rarely admit it, but our actions, anxieties, fears, and insecurities suggest something else. Perhaps some of us don't feels as if God is against us as we just don't necessarily feel as if He's for us. We conclude that the only person God is truly for is Himself and rightly so, we reason.

Somewhere deep inside I think we're secretly convinced that God created man with very high hopes only to have them dashed. Forget divine foreknowledge and a Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. We proved a terrible disappointment to God, but because He is faithful to His covenant, He's obligated to see the plan to completion. Therefore, He tolerates us because He's stuck with us.

Be completley honest. Have you ever felt the way I just described? Thank about how you often fell in the hidden recesses of your heart and what yor actions, faith practices, and accepted limitations suggest.

Estimate the position you tend to picture God taking with you: God is against me, OR, God tolerates me, OR, God is for me. Meditate over your history with God. Regardless of where you pictured God's position with you, name a couple of things that helped you shape that conclusion. If you maked that you are most often convinced (actions bearing witness) that "God is for you", you've already answered this question. Despite how we feel much of the time, can we think of a few times when we'd have to admit that God seemed to be on our side?

I'm hammering the point because I'd like to suggest that in our humanity we tend to determine whether God is against us, for us, or tolerating us based on how He appears to act in our circumstances. In other words, our litmus test for whether we think God is really for us is circumstantial evidence. If I don't the promotion, God was for the other guy. If the relationship doesn't work out, God didn't root for me. If the cancer treatment doesn't take, I'm not a high priority to Him.

Don't for a moment think that I'm minimizing the confusion any of these examples can cause as we try to picture God "on our side". John 12:7 continues to come to my mind with great relevance to our subject matter today. "Jesus answered him, 'What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.'"

I well remember making decisions for my children they considered to be uncaring or even mean-spirited at the moment. I even used words from time to time, "I am for you, child. For heaven's sake, I'm your mother! Why wouldn't I want what's best for you?" I remember times when one of them would claim with great drama, "You hate me!" She was too young and immature to understand that my decision was for her.

What invariably hurt most ws if one of the children charged me with making the decision selfishly because I didn't want to go the extra trouble a yes answer would necessitate. Sometimes I couldn't convince them otherwise, so I'd have to temporarily live with them thinking poorly of me and questioning my motives. I wanted to be popular with my children. I didn't want to make decisions that could be misunderstood. Still, the future ramifications were worth the present misunderstanding.

On a much greater scale, God can take a similar position. He knows when something glorious in the future necessitates something difficult in the present. Because He knows the glory will be worth it. God will risk being misunderstood. Yes, God wants us to have joyful, satisfying lives, but He also wants us to have crowns to cast. Rewards to receive. Character to develop. Compassion to give. Testimonies to tell. In the midst of those painful processes, God makes bold promises.

Romans 8:28-39 promises me that He will make sure all things work together for my good. He will graciously give me all things. He will intercede for me. He will not let anything separate me from Him. He will not condemn me. He will protect me.

He is not against you. He does not just tolerate you. He doesn't stick around because He feels obligated to you. God is on your side because He chooses to be. "

- Taken from Psalms of Ascent, by Beth Moore

God has delivered me from Satan and from self, and I want to choose to live that way each day, knowing that He is on my side because He WANTS to be! Praise the Lord.

Love,
Meredith