Thursday, November 3, 2016

GOD’S PRESENCE

GOD’S PRESENCE

Isaiah 43:2-3a            
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

             Water and fire are important spiritual symbols in Israel’s history, When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, they crossed the Red Sea basin on dry ground as the river waters towered on both sides of their traveling corridor (Exodus 14:22). When Daniel and his colleagues plunged into Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace, a fourth person like “a son of the gods” walked with them in the intense oven, causing the king to leap in amazement and to acknowledge that Daniel’s God had rescued him and his friends from certain death (Daniel 3:19-29). In times of intense crisis when God’s servants encountered great difficulty, the Lord overshadowed them with his preserving and guiding presence. As they obeyed, he went ahead of them and worked within them.

            It’s not an issue of “if” you will pass through rivers of difficulty or fires of crisis. It’s a question of when. So often God engineers these dilemmas to give him an opportunity to breakthrough into our lives with life-changing power! Let’s admit it – so often when everything is going fine, we get absorbed into our own world and forget the Lord and his consuming presence (Hebrews 12:29).  We take God’s blessings for granted and soon become lax in our gratitude. So to quicken us, the Lord turns up the temperature in the furnace.

            I’m not saying that your current trial was engineered by God’s initiative. Sometimes our sin, ignorance, stupidity and hardheartedness causes us to make bad decisions. But one thing is for certain. If you’re going through a time of difficulty, God wants to be with you. All you have to do is ask him to walk with you and he will.


 

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