It has been so easy for me
to get overwhelmed lately! My job is crazy, 130 participants going on the
World Race are about to get here and we have to put on a 10 day, very intense
training camp for them….and on top of all that, I am trying to find time to
support raise! My devotional for today was just what I needed to read,
from Oswald Chambers “My Utmost For His Highest”. I hope it speaks to
you too.
“Who
shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
God does not keep a man
immune from trouble; He says – “I will be with him in trouble.” It
does not matter what actual troubles in the most extreme form get hold of a
man’s life, not one of them can separate him from his relationship to God. We
are “more than conquerors in all these things.” Paul is not talking
of imaginary things, but of things that are desperately actual; and he says we
are super-victors in the midst of them, not by our ingenuity, or by our
courage, or by anything other than the fact that not one of them affects our
relationship to God in Jesus Christ. Rightly or wrongly, we are where we are, exactly
in the condition we are in. I am sorry for the Christian who has not something
in his circumstances he wishes was not there.
“Shall
tribulation…?” Tribulation is never a noble thing; but let tribulation
be what it may – exhausting, galling, fatiguing, it is not able to separate us
from the love of God. Never let cares or tribulations separate you from the
fact that God loves you.
“Shall
anguish…?” – can God’s love hold when everything says that His love is a
lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?
“Shall
famine…?” – can we not only believe in the love of God but be more than
conquerors, even while we are being starved?
Either Jesus Christ is a
deceiver and Paul is deluded, or some extraordinary thing happens to a man who
holds on to the love of God when the odds are all against God’s character.
Logic is silenced in the face of every one of these things. Only one thing can
account for it – the love of God in Christ Jesus. “Out of
the wreck I rise” every time.
And, I think back to where
I was and what I was doing this time last year. I was spending time with
homeless people – literally living on the streets! Why do I ever think
that my troubles are hard or bad, when I have seen with my own eyes- death,
famine, and poverty?
