Blessed be the Lord,
Because He has heard the voice of my supplication.
The Lord is my strength and my shield;
My heart trusts in Him and I am helped;
Therefore my heart exults,
And with my song I shall thank Him.
Psalm 28:6-7
In good times, in bad times and at all times God watches over us. When we cannot see the end, God is already there waiting for us.
And, we are thankful.
With my mouth I will give thanks abundantly to the Lord;
And in the midst of many I will praise Him.
For He stands at the right hand of the needy,
To save him from those who judge his soul.
Psalms 109:30-31.
We all know them: Needy people. They may be the victims of situations beyond their control or they may be victims of their own stupidity. They may be us. It is easy to beat up on ourselves and other people when things go wrong. God does the opposite. When everyone else is running away from us, God is running to us.
When things are at their worst, God is at His best.
And have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.
Jude 1:22-23
When I was young and on fire for the Lord, I ran into a friend who proceeded to tell me about his new found faith. The more I listened the more I realized that he was being manipulated by a cult. He had shreds of Bible truths, but the bulk of what he spoke was far outside the truth of Christianity.
I felt panicky about what I should say. I said the first thing that popped into my head; I said, “Hey, why don’t you come to the church I go to on Sunday?”
At first he balked, but then he agreed to come. The next Sunday, he and his family came to church and he and his wife accepted Jesus as their Lord, Master and Savior. Over the next few weeks they discovered that they were not judged by their past mistakes, but were accepted and loved as part of the church family.
This is the mercy we are to have; mercy that extends the love of God and the truth of the Gospel to everyone.
Be brave; snatch someone out of the fire.
Seek the Lord while He may be found;
Call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
And let him return to the Lord,
And He will have compassion on him,
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.
Isaiah 55:6-7
God does not view humans as humans view humans. God desires that we come to Him, not because we are good, but because God is good. As long as we have a breath in our bodies we are candidates for God’s forgiveness.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
Galatians 5:25
These characteristics are big goals. Our human nature causes us to respond to the grating of everyday aggravations with irritability and grouchiness.
Yet, here we are given what we are to aspire to – love, joy, peace and the rest, all of which roundly defeat our natural tendencies to be angry.
And, how do we do this? We do this through prayer, reading the Bible and most of all through the grace of God.
God did not create us to be miserable, angry people. God created us to be filled with love and joy. Let us work to be all we can be with God’s help.
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Titus 3:4-7
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.
We have come to know and believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in the world.
We love, because He first loved us.
1 John 4:15-17, 19
No matter what happens in life, God loves us. He does not love us because we are good. He loves us because He is good.
God’s love is unconditional and does not vary because of our success or failure. God sees each one of us as belonging to Him and loves us just as we are. When we realize this truth, it shakes us to the core and produces in us an amazing reaction.
We love, because He first loved us.
