It’s Not Up to Me
For You aremy rock and my fortress; for Your name’s sakeYou will lead me and guide me. Psalm 31:3 NASB
Your name’s sake– So God is safe. I choose to believe that. I choose to live my life in light of His reliability. Waves come. I get tossed about. Someone I love fails me. Unanticipated trauma strikes. But I choose to believe that God cares, that He is faithful, despite what I see. And I’m okay, right?
It sounds good, doesn’t it? We just maintain that firm grip on God and let the waters wash over us. Oh, if we only could. But often we lose that firm grip and find ourselves rolling under the powerful surf of emotion. Then it seems as if we’re at fault. We should have held on. We should have remained vigilant. But we didn’t.
All of that makes it seem as if the experience of God’s reliability is up to us. He’s reliable, all right, but our experience of His reliability is really our responsibility. And too often we fail. So even if God is (technically) completely safe and reliable, we lose the grip because we aren’t reliable. It’s our failures that lead us into the desperate straits.
David stops that sort of thinking right in its tracks. It’s not up to us. It was never up to us. In other words, God doesn’t set us up with difficulties in order to determine if we are worthy of protecting. I’m sorry to tell you this but life is not a test. It’s not an examination of your faith to determine if you should graduate into heaven. God isn’t playing games with your ability to maintain grip. “For Your name’s sake” simply says that God offers safety and protection because He wants to, because doing so glorifies Him. It has nothing to do with you. God is glorified by providing you and me with a safe haven even when we have done nothing—nothing to deserve it or nothing to initiate it. God is glorified by His ownreliability and that doesn’t change even when we can’t seem to appreciate it (or find it). There are lessons to learn on this journey, but determining if God cares enough to give me shelter is not one of them. The Bible never attempts to prove that God exists, and it never tries to prove that God loves us. It simply assumes this to be true, to be the way the universe was created, to be manifest to all who really look. Only those whose perceptions of the world have been blunted miss this fact. The authors of our biblical texts could not imagine a world devoid of the divine and every page of the Bible assumes this reality. This realm is not about us. Oh, we are players, no doubt, but the goal is not our glory and therefore the pattern, the purpose and the progress are ultimately not ours to control. God’s name, YHVH, is at stake in the universe and He will make sure it is not sullied. That’s why you and I can rely on Him.
That’s reassuring.
Topical Index: name’s sake, reliability, Psalm 31:3
Thank you for these beautiful devotions. I’ve often thought that myself that there certain things I don’t have to pray for it’s just a gimmee.
It’s not all about us, that’s true. It’s for His glory, that’s true. But it is about us, also, and it is for our glory, too. It’s not either/or but both. Just like it wasn’t all about Yeshua and it was about the glory of the Father, but it was about him, also, and it was for his glory, too. We are not just pawns. We are sons and daughters. And it is up to us whether or not we believe in Him, and it is up to us whether or not we do as Messiah did……obey trust and obey the Father.
It’s a test, for sure, but not to see if we are good enough for Him to love us. It’s a test to see if we believe He’s good enough for us to love Him. It’s a testing of our faith, that He might reveal what’s in our hearts and then to prove Himself for who He is, that we might humble ourselves, turn to Him with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, and trust and obey Him as Yeshua, His son, does.
I’m fine with all that! It’s not bad. It’s just hard. He knows what He’s doing. Always has. The trying and testing of our faith, that He might refine us like fine. Like pure, fine gold! And He will, for He is the Author and Perfector of our faith!
Have you seen it?
The blindness (and hatred) of mankind is alive and well in our
country today. And there’s a name behind it.
“…Satan, who leads the whole world astray.” Rev 12:9
But there’s another Name behind everything!
“for the whole world is mine, and all that is in it.” Ps 50:12
For His name’s sake, He has provided the way to see, to know
and to be. He created that spark within. We know, and we rest assured.
Skip, I think you’re probably right when you say that, in general, God doesn’t intentionally set up difficulties for us (altho He can,) nor is He playing games with us…but, I do think He pays close attention to how we respond when those difficulties, what ever the cause, come across our path.
Love never never never lets go. Period. It finds us where we are and sticks with us. In the end, choices are about respect. God respects our choices. We choose the valley of the shadow of death: He enters that field and stays with us.
The test has never been whether He loves us: whether He is going to stick with us. He knows who loves (is connected with Him) and who is not. It is poor, deceived us who lack the ability to see who loves whom. Life is designed to make that clear to us. If we are separated from Him, it is we who have let go of Him.
In the end, it will be up to us whether or not we let go of Him or, like David, cling to the end. In the end, He will agree with whatever we choose. Nobody is ever forced to accept life OR death. Both are equal choices, but, as we have been advised, “life” is the correct answer to all the questions. Heaven stands by to agree.