Settled!

Settled!

The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.

Nahum 1:7 KJV

Context:

Nahum received a vision, a message about one of the enemies of Israel: Nineveh. God's wrath was to be poured out on the nation due to its sin and wickedness. This is a lesson to be constantly hammered home: God punishes sin. It does not matter who you are, what you are doing now or how popular you are now; sin leads to destruction. Things may be looking up for you, but beware of the deceit of sin. It lulls you into a false sense of security, especially when the punishment for the sin is not immediately applied.

When you read: "The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents his wrath against his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger but great in power; the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished", you have to pause and ask yourself if you are on the right side of those words. You don't want to be caught on the wrong side of God's anger against sin. His love is amazing, but his anger is equally all-consuming. His mercy lasts for a lifetime, but his anger against sin has eternal consequences. I need to examine myself again in the light of God's Word and see where I need to make amends.

Message and Response:

As I consider the thought in the paragraphs above, I wonder what today's extract is all about. How do I embrace the message in today's extract, in the face of God's judgment of sin? How do I see clearly that which God would have me see, so that I can lay hold of that which he desires for me? The secret to the blessings of the first part of today's verse lies in the second part of the verse: God knows those who trust in Him.

It is not about what I claim, but what God knows. It is not about what men say, what they applaud or what they approve of, but what God says he accepts. If God accepts my life and offering, does it matter what the opinion of mortal men is? If God rejects my life and all it offers, does it matter if the men of the world fete and celebrate me? I must be careful about the things that my heart holds dear, because what God counts as important are usually not things the human heart naturally seeks. This is why I must be careful about the state of my heart and the things that are its pursuits and priorities.

In who/what is your trust? When all else fails around you, who/what is your first thought of safety? Your answer is a window into the object/target of your trust. If my default setting when trouble comes is to check my bank account balance, or it is to call on my circle of influence or to draw on my political or personal network, there is your answer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having them, but are they all you seek, to the exclusion of the God who can wipe them all out in a second, if he desires so? Ask Job, maybe the richest man in his own time, who lost all he owned in a single day. Even his wife and best friends gave him the suicide option, but his heart trusted in God, and even in the face of provocation and uncertainty, he held on to God.

We know how Job's life ended, but what if you cry out and it seems that God is far away; what do you do? How do you handle the season of 'silence'? There is a peace that total trust in God births in a man's heart that no bad experience can defeat. If I am fully fixed on God, my heart cannot be drawn away and enticed by the offerings of men. The peace that trusting in God brings is the type that can not be defeated, even by death. I just have to make sure that what I hold on to is that genuine version, the type that God gives.

He is a good God, who does good things, but his path may lead me down the valley of the shadow of death. He is a strong hold in the day of trouble, but how would I know the value of who he is if there is actually no trouble to prove who he is? How would I prove Him to be a stronghold if there was never any need to seek refuge or protection? Men like David knew the value of a place of refuge; he sang a lot about his personal experience. 

Do you have a personal story of your own experience of God as protection and a refuge from trouble? Does God know you as his own; as someone who has put his absolute trust in God? When the world around you denies the existence of God through its words and actions, where do you stand? Can the Lord trust your heart, that it is a place from where he can be made known to men of this generation? God is seeking men whose lives he can live in and work out of; men whose hearts are totally committed to Him. Are you one of such people? Am I? At the end of it all, the one who lives in me and controls my life will be made known. Eternity beckons; I must be sure that God knows me as His own. My heart must be settled in me that He is fully in charge. His time of favour is here.