The Lord our Warrior
There are many different ways we can think about God. He is presented in Scripture as a God of love and mercy. He is also the Creator as well as our Rescuer. God is even spoken of as a Protector and a Warrior. Most importantly, God is the Protector of His people, those who trust in Him.
We don’t always consider God as a warrior, fighting on our behalf through the various trials and battles in life. Maybe you even remember a tough season when it seemed like God was absent or felt distant. Typically, in seasons of difficulty, it is us who draw away from God, not God drawing away from us.
Scripture says that God is our strength and shield. But it also says that we should trust Him, which means we have to believe He is present and working in the background even when we don’t think He is. Psalm 28:7 says that as we trust in Him, He will help us in our need.
In addition to trusting in God during seasons of difficulty, the Psalmist encourages us to find joy in God, not only through trusting Him but also through singing songs of praise and worship. Singing to God, especially in the midst of tough seasons, has the power to turn our hearts and minds toward God because singing to God is actually a way of building trust in God.
Songs remind us of who God is and what He has done for us in the past, so that we can trust Him in the present. All of this builds our trust and produces joy in our lives.
During this Advent season, and time of reflection, consider: Are you trusting God to be your strength and shield, or are you trying to manage life’s difficulties alone? What songs can you think of that can help build your faith and joy in this season? Every season of life provides a new opportunity to trust God as our Protector and praise Him for all He has done for us.
Tag: trust
Waiting on God: Advent Devotional
Wait On The Lord
When the world around you seems wild, or the heart inside you feels weary, you can still count on God.
The psalmist said it like this:
“I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.”
Psalms 130:5 NIVThis is one of fifteen psalms known as the Pilgrim Songs, or the Songs of Ascent (comprising Psalms 120-134)—sung by Jewish travelers making the trek to Jerusalem for annual festivals.
If you read the rest of the chapter, you’ll notice a heaviness, a tenderness, a tone of repentance. The psalmist cries out “from the depths”—wanting to be heard, begging for mercy, longing for the redemption of His people, all the while hoping in and waiting on the Lord.
The NLT translation says, “I am counting on the Lord…”
If you’ve ever wondered who—other than you—has had to hope in, wait on, and trust in the Lord, it’s everyone. It’s all of us. Every person in biblical history, from Noah to Moses, Rahab to Ruth, Peter to Paul… down to us, living in this modern day.
Those who lived before Jesus Christ were waiting on the Messiah to come and rescue a fallen world. Those who live after Jesus, like us, are waiting on Him to come back and redeem everything that’s been lost—once and for all.
The season of Advent reminds us that regardless of who you are, where you’re from, or what you’ve done, you can cry out and wait on God.
He is trustworthy, He is faithful, and He always makes good on His promises.
As you wait upon the Lord during this Advent season, know that He wants you to come close—so that He can be your strength so that He can give you comfort, and so that He can provide everything you need.
My Hope Is In God
There are a lot of things these days that can cause sleepless nights for me and a lot of anxiety, not the least of which is the fear of another excruciating headache and loss of vision. But God has been speaking softly and reassuringly to my heart, telling me that He is with me and not to fear.
God is helping me to trust and to rest peacefully. And when I have difficulty falling asleep, He puts a song in my heart and off I drift to slumber.
God’s love surrounds me, at home, in doctor’s offices and even in the hospital. He is the only one in whom I have complete trust and hope.
Giving God the glory because He is worthy helps my mind to recall all of the good things He has already done and that my future is in His hands. So, praising Him helps restore my hope and my peace.
Encouragement and an Exhortation
christianfictiongirl.blog/2023/09/28/his-encouragement-240/
Please go to the original post and follow Nicole. Every Thursday, she posts Scripture and a message about it. Enlightening!
When Not If
God’s Word is clear that we will have troubles in this life. Jesus even says so:
“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.””
John 16:33 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/jhn.16.33.NLT
God does not lie and he says that we will have trials and sorrows. That hardly seems right, does it? We turn our hearts over to God and we still face trials. Pondering on this fact got me to thinking and reading Scriptures about the trials we face.
As a student of languages, I notice things like conjunctions. In this verse, “when” is a conjunction, drawing all of the thoughts of the verse together. I noticed right away that this verse does not use the conjunction “if.” If would be more comforting for me, implying that I may or may not pass through rivers (troubles), and I may or may not walk through fire. But God’s prophet Isaiah used the word when and that says just what it means. We will indeed walk through rivers, be overwhelmed by them (like we’re drowning in a sea of troubles) and we will walk through fire. But in order to get comfort from this verse, one has to read the entire verse carefully. Yes, troubles will come, but God will be with us. The waters will not be able to overwhelm us although they will indeed try to do so. Finally, when we walk through the fire, we won’t be burned by it or consumed within its flames. God’s promise is that even though we will have troubles, He will be with us and take care of us.
Why, then, do we have troubles and trials if God is going to take care of us in them? Why doesn’t He just take them away?
Every time we face a new trial, a new overwhelming problem, if you will, that gives God the opportunity to do a new thing in our lives. His ultimate purpose is to help us to be more like Him. He is the one who shows us the new pathway to take and gives us water to drink in the desert. We may not like where we are or the trials that we face, but we can trust God to bring us through to the other side and that we will learn from them and be more like Him once we overcome. God’s plan is not to make life easy for us, but instead He plans to use life’s lessons to make us more like Him, bearing the fruits of the Spirit and able to climb the next mountain more easily.
I am still studying the Book of Job in my devotional every day and a quotation from Tina Wilson’s book STEP INTO SCRIPTURE resonated with me this morning and made me think deeply about its meaning and its application in my life.
This quotation is from Day 9 of Tina Wilson’s devotional, STEP INTO SCRIPTURE. Think about it. If Job had not been found faithful, Satan may have left him alone and he would not have lost all that he had. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Once again, we have the dilemma of trusting God through the troubles or turning away from Him in bitterness and anger.
God has a plan and it’s a good one. We just have to trust Him to carry us through all of the troubles that it takes to get to the end of His plan for us. Ultimately, His love wins and so do we, if we persevere and don’t give up!
The Lord
Who is the Lord of your life? Is it yourself? Something you have accomplished in your life that you are proud of? A material possession that means more to you than anything? Or perhaps your family whom you love dearly. These things may be important to us, but none of them can be the Lord of your life. There is only one Lord, one God, and as a dear pastor used to say, “It ain’t you!”
Only our God can help us when we are fearful. He is our Lord.
God’s Spirit was sent to abide in each of us and gives us the freedom to choose to make Him Lord in all of our daily decisions.
God is our lighthouse, the one who shows us the way and gives us the power and strength to follow the right path towards eternity with Him.
My Thoughts on a Potpourri of Verses
As I read my Bible and devotionals this morning, my mind kept returning to all of the chaos and evil in the world. I sought God’s help in understanding and the hope that only comes from knowing and believing His Word.
Fear tries to overtake my heart because of all of the rampant evil. But God continually reminds me that He is trustworthy and I need not be afraid.
God will always protect me from the evil that surrounds me. I can count on Him to be with me in the middle of the storm.
Our hope lies in the cross where Jesus stated, “It is finished.” He completed the sacrifice for me so that I can be with the Lord forever. Victory is assured…I just have to get through to the end of this present evil age.
It’s a scary thing to contemplate that the God of justice will judge our nations for their wickedness. Refusing to acknowledge God won’t end in anything good for those who turn their backs on Him. I’m blessed to be on the winning side but I am sad for those who flaunt their evil ways and taunt God with their worship of self.
God does not want to destroy nations or the wicked. He prefers that everyone join in accepting His free gift of salvation and come to Him as victorious servants, not continue to be seemingly free evil doers. The second death is the final and ultimate death, the one that determines whether we end up in the lake of fire with Satan or in Heaven with God for eternity. God prefers that we repent but He will not force us to do so.
God gets a lot of the blame for what happens on earth. My thoughts are that people get the consequences that they deserve for their foolish choices. Being angry with God is worthless because in the end, the one who is destroyed is the one who refuses to be wise and repent.
Out of all of my verses this morning, this is the one that stood out to me most and made my heart leap, not necessarily with joy, but with recognition of truth. One day, there will be justice. God’s final judgment will mete out justice to all. The godly will be rejoicing but the evil will be terrified. Sounds fitting to me…and a hope to look forward to. When I was growing up and didn’t know God as Lord, I was frequently bullied. Since I did believe in a higher power, I would pray that one day God would “give them what they had coming to them.” Little did I know that the final judgment is exactly what that will be…God has the final word, so fearing the Lord before judgment day is a must if you want to be in the group that is rejoicing.
Praise the Lord that the victory is already His!
The Present Tense
As a grammarian and a retired foreign language teacher, I am generally aware of the use of tenses in sentences. I notice present, past and future tenses and sometimes that makes all the difference in my thinking. Today in my devotional, it’s all about the present tense, where I am right now.
The Lord keeps me from all harm…right now. He is currently watching over me and all that I do. I consider that very comforting. God is not confined by the constraints of time as we know it because He is infinite, but He steps into my present and is carefully watching over me. Comforting, isn’t it?
The verb “is” means currently, present tense. God has been my refuge and strength in the past and will continue to be in the future. But for today, I can count on Him to be my refuge, to be my strength right now, right where I am and in the circumstances I am currently facing. Encouraging, isn’t it?
Every day, each of us faces new troubles, whether from our health, our family circumstances, our finances or whatever comes up. God is always present, right there with us, no matter what we face. He saves us, present tense, from whatever enemies may attack us. The promise is that He will protect us and the reality is in the present tense. His hand is already there, ready for us to grasp and be saved by His power and mercy and grace. Humbling, isn’t it?
Although my focus is on the present tense in this little blog today, I want to end with a view of the future. God is always trustworthy. He is a rock on which we can stand and take refuge. We can trust Him forever because He never changes and He never will. Powerful, isn’t it?
As you read your devotional today and spend time with the Lord, may He be ever present in your heart, mind and soul.
Prayer and Peace
Just when I was beginning to think that I was on the mountaintop, looking down into the valleys of all my trials and worries, a new medical test comes along, and boom! There I am, calling out to God for help to get through this one. I awakened a lot during the night, knowing that my EMG is early this morning. Each time, God would bring a praise song to my mind and I would drift back to sleep. It doesn’t help my state of mind that I have had this test before, know that it’s uncomfortable and takes about an hour of pins and electric shocks, simultaneously. Nevertheless, I am trusting God to get me through it without tears of anguish and frustration. The last time I had the test was over eight years ago, after my stroke, so I don’t recall a lot, just the pain and the feeling that it was taking a long time. I think a “long time” is relative when you are in pain that is being dealt out by a machine in the hands of a technician who gently says that it will be slightly uncomfortable. But, just as God has been with me through all the other tests, He will walk with me through this one, too. It reminds me of the wilderness experience of the Israelites. God took them through the wilderness, not around it. So, through this trial I go and I am confident that I will come out the other side, more compassionate for others going through tedious and painful medical procedures.
Fixing my thoughts on God helped me sleep during the night, so I know that fixing my thoughts on Him will help me get through the pain of electricity coursing through my body. Honestly, childbirth does hurt more, so there is that. And I know that my Lamaze breathing helped the last time I had the test done, so I will take deep breaths and with each inhale, I will say a prayer of thanksgiving that I am able to have the test done and a prayer that the test will show what the doctors need to know.
I think that peace comes as a result of prayers, so I am wearing my full armor today, including the shoes on my feet that come from the peace of God’s Good News. As He continues to remind me, nothing will happen to me today that He and I cannot handle together!
Vickie's Book Nook and Meditation Corner 