GOD IS IN TOTAL CONTROL EVEN WHEN WE FORGET
Psalm 97:1-5
The LORD reigns, let the earth rejoice;
let the many coastlands be glad!
Clouds and thick darkness are all around him;
righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
Fire goes before him
and burns up his adversaries all around.
His lightnings light up the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
before the Lord of all the earth.
What kind of desperation would envelop our lives, if we
didn’t know and believe that God reigns! What kind of fool believes that
destiny is in his own hands? We say that we believe that God reigns, but then
we continue to worry. We lay awake at night, we run around in the day, as if we
could control our future or the events that happen around us.
We worry about things that are not true. Worrying about the
future includes our creative imagining about what the future will look like. We
are not prophets! We worry about our ability to come up with solutions to the
future catastrophes that we have invented. What a vain and unedifying way of
thinking!
Nature is in the hands of God and trembles at His power, so
why do we fret? If our fear is that God will allow bad things to happen to us,
then the psalmist reminds us that righteousness and justice are the foundations
of His throne. Everything God does is perfect. No man can question it.
You and I are living the situations that God has ordained
for us; our future will be filled with only what God will allow. God is the
Lord of all the earth!
Matthew 6:25a
“Therefore I tell you,
do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,
nor about your body, what you will put on.
Matthew 6:27
And which of you by
being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
Matthew 6:34
“Therefore do not be
anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for
the day is its own trouble.
Jesus, Himself, commanded us not to worry. Our worry
produces nothing good, and causes us to carry weights that distract us from the
responsibilities of the day.
The unbelieving world lives, daily chasing their own gods.
Psalm 97:7
All worshipers of images are put to shame,
who make their boast in worthless idols;
worship him, all you gods!
Psalm 14:1
The fool says in his
heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they
do abominable deeds,
there is none who does
good.
Living without an awareness or belief in God produces only
sin. Our lack of trust in God and our fear also produces sin. Why would we ever
allow our finite minds to rule our lives?
Psalm 97:10-12
O you who love the LORD, hate evil!
He preserves the lives of his saints;
he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
Light is sown for the righteous,
and joy for the upright in heart.
Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous,
and give thanks to his holy name!
What God wants us to do right now is to love Him, and
therefore hate all that is evil. Our trust, our rest, needs to be rooted in God
and His promises. God wants our paths to be illuminated by His word. God does
not expect us to walk in darkness. Matters and events we don’t know about are
hidden to us, because God is preparing us for when they will be made known. And
He will then give us grace to live through what He has ordained.
The believer should rejoice in the Lord, who will do all in
complete control and justice. Only thankfulness should spring out of our hearts,
because although we do not know the future, we do know the One who holds it. And
we know that He will not allow us to go through anything that He has not
prepared us, with His grace, to bear.
When you and I start to
worry, we must repent and fill our minds, instead, with the Word!
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