January 3 Reading Plan

January 3

Pslam 11-15, 1 Samuel 5-6

 

Do you believe in the sovereign hand of God?

 

Sometimes it can feel like we have been left alone to figure things out for ourselves. 

 

David writes from such a place of despair when he says the words in Psalm 13

 

“How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hid you face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?”

 

This is the sound of a person struggling with what they are facing in life. You might understand this struggle if you have ever walked through something that doesn’t make sense. Have you ever noticed that it can be so easy to trust God, that is, until it is put to the test. The truth is, we don’t know what we really believe until it is tested. 

 

David, in this testing moment, shows us that it is ok to be honest with God - to let him know that we feel unheard and even unseen. Yet listen to how he ends Psalm 13

 

“But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.”

 

When the ark of the Covenant had been taken from Israel, there was a sense of despair. They knew that God had allowed his presence and hand of protection to be removed from them due to their arrogance. Yet they also knew that God is sovereign and that he is always at work. 

 

While the Ark of the Covenant was in the Philistine camp, God was actively at work making sure that his presence was able to be realigned with his people. Using supernatural power, God allowed the philistines to understand the true power of the living God. So while they pursued their own gods and ignored the power of the sovereign God, they were introduced to the God who holds all things in his hands. And their response, was to send it away. They couldn’t handle the fact that they weren’t in control and that there was a sovereign power at work. 

 

We love to know that God is in charge and that he has a plan - that is, until it calls us to let go of our plans. Then we get so distracted and turned off, that we would rather compartmentalize the presence of God, than adjust how we are living, thinking, and acting. So the Philistines sent the most powerful, most Holy, most majestic presence of the almighty God away, in order that they might maintain their devotion to false ideologies. 

 

Don’t get so caught up in your ways, that you forget there is a sovereign God who is in charge and in control. He isn’t forgetting you and hasn’t allowed you to be tormented. Though evil things happen, it isn’t because God doesn’t care and that he is punishing you. In fact, he is working a way for you to be with him. This was the ultimate plan for Jesus coming to this earth. It was God’s way of reconciling our foolish abandonment of His plans, back into alignment with him. 

 

So may you feel the presence of God today. May you know, that though you feel alone, you are being pursued by the living God. And May you rest patiently, in the middle of your storm, knowing that God has already made a way fro you to be with him, through Jesus Christ our Lord!