Sunday, July 30, 2017

Psalms 27:1 -- On Resisting Fear and Turning to God

"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"
Psalms 27:1


We have so much anxiety in life, and I was reading this and wondering how much of it is needless.  God isn't going to stop every bad thing from happening to us in our lives, because challenges are how we grow and stretch and learn to become better than we are.  But even in the midst of the challenges, we can be happy and at peace through God.  It's not about finding a way to extract all of the trials from our lives, but removing our fear about, and our negative reactions to, them.

Not saying it is easy by a long shot.  When my house floods, I freak out when things go wrong, as we all do at times.  But learning to freak out less and trust more is part of the human experience, and really the core of this verse.  The Lord lights our lives... we don't need to be afraid of the darkness if we have him with us.  And with God standing beside us, we don't need to be afraid of anyone else either.  Yes, given, our lives can get dark and people can beat us up, and we shouldn't walk into bad situations thinking that we are immune.  With God though,  those physical things can't harm the core of who we are.  Like Job, if we endure and maintain our belief, we always end up better in the long run.

It's hard to believe that in the moment sometimes, right when things are going wrong and our world seems to be melting down around us.  When those times come, let's get on our knees.  God can strengthen and comfort us, if we turn to him rather than away from him.  ... Today, let's try turning in the right direction, and learning a little bit better not to freak out. :)

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