Extraordinary Times

Extraordinary times.

Whatever else is going on in your nation, one thing is for certain, none of us have every known a time like this before. Like me, I expect you have had more questions than usual to ask the Lord, as you navigate your way through these circumstances. I also expect that, like me, perhaps you will be spending more time than usual in prayer, in the scriptures and in listening to the voice of the Spirit.

I have found Psalm 91 in particular, a deep well of God’s promise at this time, and I have a few thoughts to share with you; I hope they are helpful.

I’ll start in the middle of the Psalm, verse 9,

“If you make the Lord your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter.”

There are many beautiful promises in this psalm but to me, they seem to turn on this principle. We place ourselves in a position to be able to receive all that the Lord desires to do for us when we make Him our refuge. He wants to be our first and only port of call; no substitutes, no alternatives, no ‘plan B’, no escape routes, Him and Him alone.

We can all say a strong ‘Amen’ to this as sound theologically, but what happens when the rubber hits the road? In a time like we are in, we have very legitimate concerns about family, friends and work. Can we constantly stay in His shelter, in the refuge He offers, when these concerns rise up in our hearts and minds?

In the opening verse of the Psalm we read this,

“Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty”

‘Social distancing’ would not allow us to be as close as the Lord wishes us to be to Him. So, to be in His shadow requires us to get close and to stay close. We need to be continually aware that we are invited to be that close to the Lord, and also that we are required to keep our eyes on Him, in case any distance builds up between us that we have not noticed.

Distance can occur because we allow our attention and our affection to drift from Him, and we never want to allow that.

Let’s get close and stay close to Him, continually.

This encouragement comes to you from EurECA.eureca-online.org/ and is based on material from The Essential Christian Teacher hopeineducation.org/