It’s All His
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Psalm 24
1 The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein
I’ve been meditating on this passage of scripture last night and this morning. If we don’t meditate on the scripture, we can lose a lot of meaning from God’s Word.
We say “Yeah, the Earth is the Lord’s. That’s kind of a given isn’t it”? Not really.
If we start looking at our lives in relation to the Gospel, we don’t live like the Earth is the Lord’s. If we are honest, we live like our lives our ours to choose to live how we want, we spend our money like it is ours and we can do what we want, and we pick scripture that we choose to follow and others we choose to “not listen to”.
That phrase “and the fullness thereof ” accentuates the fact that everything truly belongs to Him and Him alone. From the oxygen you breath, your family, to the things that you worship and give a greater place to than Him. It is all His!
Do we (includes me) act like our lives are truly His? Do our actions reflect a life submitted to Christ? I’m sure everyone can say there is something they are struggling to trust and give God control of. This is why we need His grace so terribly. Our need reflects our inadequacy. Our struggle for control reveals our powerlessness.
Jesus does allow us to experience failure, loss, hunger, frustration, poverty. It is not out of anger that God does this because has already paid the full penalty for our sins and transgressions. He took the consequenses for disobedience, the shame of our failures, and the punishment for our transgressions. What didn’t God do that allows me to go through these things? Why do we suffer? We suffer to bring Him glory, that in these weak, disobedient, wicked shells that will one day pass away, His glory can be made manifest. I am no longer being punished for my sin. I may be disciplined, but I am never rejected. We are His children, and the Father disciplines those He loves. I may go through difficult times but the Father will never leave or forsake us. EVER. We experience suffering because our hearts wander, we lack trust in Him, or we try to find our needs met outside of Christ.
Why do we struggle financially? It is because we do not trust God to provide so we strive, stress, and look for any other way under the sun to find security and sustenance. He will allow us to continue to struggle financially not as a punishment, but that we may through that suffering come to the understanding that He is our provider. Why do people struggle to find peace and turn to drugs and alcohol? It is because they do not find peace in the cross of Christ and do not allow God to bear the weight of our cares. God allows us to experience this lack of peace till we understand where we are to find true peace.
The Lord contends for our hearts. His Spirit works in our lives to make us aware of our need for Him, and reminds us that everything belongs to Him.
Kevin
Please Pray for Me
I have something pretty stressful I have to do tommorrow, and I would appreciate your prayers. I don’t want to get into specifics here but I am doing pretty good at the moment, but I would ask you to pray for His peace to rest upon me and in Me. I am glad it will be over (hopefully). God is in control. Just need to get my body brain to believe it.
It’s funny how you can know that God has our lives in our hands, yet we still fret about things. I trust God but my body still has that nervous feeling and my brain wants to think of every possible scenerio that could happen. It’s quite irritating. Many would say “You think you trust Him but you don’t”. I would tell you that you don’t know what you are talking about. You can’t tell me that Stephen had no fear as the people took him out to be stoned. Jesus suffered from so much stress in Gethsamane that his sweat became great drops of blood (Luke 22:44). Our spirit rests in the hands of our Heavenly Father, but our bodies are corrupted and self-preservation is its top priority. Anything perceived as a threat to it’s well being will bring on the fight-flight reaction. I believe that is why we can be stressed and still know our lives rest in His hands. I have heard of many accounts of people who faced life threatening situations and stood in perfect peace. I believe that this is a supernatural event cause this does not happen normally. It is not natural for people to respond this way. This is an expception, not a rule and I think it has led to an undue amount of condemnation for believers.
Got on a tangent. Oh well.
God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love and self-control (2 Timothy 1:7)
And let the God of peace rule in your hearts, to indeed you were called in one body (Colossians 3:15)
Peace out
Kevin
