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, need 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 with 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 of faithlessness and fill our minds,
instead, with the Word!
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