Psalm 27:4-5 One thing I have desired of the Lord, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord All the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in His temple. For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion; In the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me; He shall set me high upon a rock.
The world these days is full of bad news, with the aftershocks of Covid, an ongoing war in Ukraine, tensions throughout the Middle East, and the natural disasters that continue to take place. It's a time of trouble all right, and for us believers, it may sometimes be hard to believe – but it never is as bad as it seems. Let me illustrate with a joke I like to share with my messages.
Way out west (in America, of course), a cowboy is driving down a road, his dog riding in the back of his pickup truck, his faithful horse in the trailer behind. As he takes a curve on the highway he suddenly loses control of the vehicle and has a terrible accident.
Sometime later, a State Police officer comes on the scene. A great lover of animals, the officer's attention is first drawn to the horse. Realizing the serious nature of its injuries, he draws his service revolver and puts the animal out of its misery. Then walking around the accident he finds the dog, also critically wounded, and whining miserably in pain. This grips his heart and he quickly ends the dog's suffering as well.
Finally, the police officer locates the cowboy, who has suffered multiple fractures and can barely breathe. “Hey, are you okay?”, he says.
The cowboy takes one look at the smoking gun in the trooper's hand and quickly replies, with unexpected energy, “Never felt better!”
We are pilgrims in this dangerous world, which will wound us at times so badly it will seem unbearable – yet we have this promise from God, “in the time of trouble He will hide me”. Our true life for us as believers is hidden in Him. So when the world approaches us with a smoking gun, ready to put us out of our misery, perhaps we can find a supernatural strength, and simply say, "I never felt better!"
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Some of the wealthiest individuals in the United States are real estate developers. They make their money by buying a piece of property that is terribly run down, seemingly useless, without any value to the naked eye and reforming it completely, making it look brand new! These businessmen are not as much interested in what is on the property as they are interested in the land it’s on!
A sailor who was shipwrecked on a desert island was captured by some of the natives of that island. They carried him off on their shoulders to their village, where he was sure he would end up being the main course. But instead, they put a crown on his head and made him king. He was enjoying all the attention he was receiving but was growing a little suspicious. He started making inquiries and discovered that their custom was to crown a stranger king for a year and at the end of that year the crowned king would be sent to a deserted island where he was allowed to starve to death.
With war drums beating even more intensely in Iran and Syria, we’ve received numerous phone calls and emails expressing their concerns — and understandably so! Nevertheless, even in this climate of anxiety, we are preparing to enter into Shabbat (the Hebrew word for Sabbath) this afternoon. And as we do, we are remembering again, the deep lesson of God’s entering into His rest following the six creation days.
This is one of my favorite promises in the Bible — that God turns mourning into dancing! He takes away the anguish of being clothed in sadness and replaces it with gladness. However, notice what God doesn’t do — simply stop your mourning and make it disappear. No, He transforms it…into joy!
As we discussed last week, the word for “sign” in ancient Hebrew is “oht”. It was used in Genesis to designate God’s covenant sign with Noah, (the rainbow). And we see now the same word again, in Exodus, identified with the deliverance of the Jewish people from the tenth plague, when the angel of death passed through all Egypt to strike the firstborn. Anyone under the “sign” of the blood was spared.
Yesterday we wrote about one of the greatest moves of God … the Moravian Revival. When the community was in complete disarray, Count Zinzendorf focused on how they could live together in love despite their differences. He called all the men together for an intense study of the Scriptures to focus on how Christian life in community was portrayed. These studies combined with intense prayer convinced many of the believers that they were called to live together in love and that their disunity and conflict were contrary to the clear calling of Scripture.
In the late 1800s, an awakening in South Africa led by Andrew Murray was a powerful move of God. Studying that revival yields essential insights concerning the events occurring now throughout the United States. As the spirit of God began to move in Cape Town, Murray compared the SA revival with past experiences of revivals in Europe. He decided that the intense “emotionalism” was a false experience of God and charged in to break up the meeting. Stepping out of the church, he encountered his father standing and weeping. His father rebuked Andrew, “How dare you stop something that I have prayed to happen for 30 years!”