We Live In A War Zone!

Do you feel like you’ve been doing hand-to-hand combat this week? Are you waiting for the other shoe to drop, the next bad news to come, the next emergency to hit the deck? Does trouble always seem to find its way to your doorstep?

You’re not alone. It’s that way for a lot of us from time-to-time. We live in a world encompassed by fear, worry, anger, heartache. It’s easier to sink to the bottom of the barrel than it is to lift up our eyes and begin praising.

Moses had a whole crowd of people that needed reminding that God goes before us in our daily battles, preparing the way and overcoming the barriers. God helps us regardless of the problems in our path. No matter how insurmountable the obstacles seem, it is well to remember God is Sovereign and He will keep His promises.

There are a ton of promises we can claim when we’re in the midst of the battle:

“Do not be afraid of him, for I have given you victory” (Deuteronomy 3:2 NLT).

“After you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast” (1 Peter 5:10 TNIV).

“For the Lord your God has blessed you in everything you have done. He has watched your every step through this great wilderness. During these forty years, the Lord your God has been with you, and you have lacked nothing” (Deuteronomy 2:7 NLT).

We need to remember the blessings. We need to remember to praise. We need to remember that He’s never failed us. Praising Him helps us look to our God and Savior, not just look for the signs and wonders he produces around us. But when He is the center of our world, more signs and wonders swirl around us more often.

“He rescues and saves his people; he performs miraculous signs and wonders in the heavens and on earth” (Daniel 6:27 NLT).

Our encounters with Jesus always occur “along the way” in life. The Bible is full of stories about ordinary people, like you and me, doing ordinary things, but “along the way” they encountered Jesus—and nothing was ever ordinary again. (Remember Paul on his way to Damascus; James and John on their way fishing; the Samaritan woman on her way to a well.)

Jesus can find us while we are on the way to the top or the bottom; on the way to a great career, a terrible divorce, or bankruptcy.

We may believe we are on the road up or on the road down, but once we start following Jesus along the way in life, we discover that we’re always on the road to Jerusalem.

“It is never about what we do; it’s always about receiving what God is doing.”

(Some of these thoughts are adapted from M. Craig Barnes in Sacred Thirst: Meeting God in the Desert of Our Longings)