Stand Therefore
God is merciful. He is so kind. He made us and set us in the beauty of Eden. He provided all things that we needed. He gave us life and food; a garden with no thistles and relationship with first Himself and then with man. When sin entered the world through the disobedience of man He still made a plan to rescue us; to restore us back to life and provision. Because of that sin and the rebellion of those who have not yet received God’s gift of redemption the world remains in darkness – pain, suffering, lack and infirmity still lurk.
Receiving God’s gift of eternal life is receiving His protection. It is allowing Him to be Lord who guides and leads us, and Saviour who continually saves us from evil. God has defeated evil and it will be utterly destroyed when He judges the world but because we are in the world though not of it we will be faced with hardships and trials. God promises to save us, to deliver us in time.
There are a lot of things that may hurt us as we wait like impatience and fear or our flesh wasting away but we should wait on God regardless. We should wait in prayer, we should wait in worship. It is in prayer and worship that His Spirit fills us up. He inhabits the praises of His people. His Spirit will be with us and the fruit we need to wait He will give to us (See Galatians 5:22).
His fruit gives us His character and His love gives us the grace we need to wait therefore we should not allow these things (hardship) to cause us to drift away from our faith. They should not be the deciding factor of our fate. We should hold on to God. We should hold on to His promises and we should trust in His faithfulness. We should stand.
God knows all things, He even knows the ones we sometimes feel have caught Him by surprise therefore we can trust that He knows the pain we feel in waiting, loves us enough to rescue us and cares about how we feel about Him enough to display His faithfulness so He will deliver us.
“…and after you have done everything, to stand.” Ephesians 6:13 (NIV)
A single day is like a thousand to God and a thousand is like one to God. His timing is perfect and His refining work cannot be measured therefore our stand in trial may take longer than expected but after we have done all that God requires of us in battle we are to stand firm still in faith. To trust that He knows what He is doing and that what He has asked of us is enough. Stand in faith, stand in trust; do not waver, do not panic – stand. God calls us more than conquerors. Therefore we should not allow things or hardship to move is from God’s side because God will never allow things to move us from His side. Let us partner with the Holy Spirit in this – that He is the power of God within us that causes us to unwaver and He is the power of God in the Heavenlies that fights the forces that seek to separate us from the love of Christ. Let us stand in faith and stay in His love. Nothing shall separate us from God’s love therefore let us not separate ourselves from Him.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness of danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
(An excerpt from Missio Dei – The Mission of Christ by Lithakazi Mkombe to be published in November 2021)