2002-01-01
Good Morning Dear Ones,
Our loving Lord, Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is there, asks us to put His perspective on the spiritual warfare we must endure. That isn’t always easy for us. None of us finds pleasure in pain, dealing with temptation, facing the fallout from betrayal by others, encountering meanness and greed in the workplace, or any of the myriad of other kinds of evil that impacts us in our lives. I have so often cited RO 5: 3-4 that I hope you know it by heart now. It gives us God’s perspective on these things which make us suffer. I know some of you are facing surgery, scary tests to see if serious illness is present, toxic workplaces, and all kinds of challenges to your faith. So, I am directed to write this message especially for you.
Paul wrote to Timothy from his cell in a Roman prison a message in 2 TIM 2: 3-4 that Jehovah Shammah inspired. “Take your part in suffering, as a loyal soldier of Christ Jesus. A soldier on active duty wants to please his commanding officer and so does not get mixed up in the affairs of civilian life.” If we were putting this message in the context of a soldier on active duty today, we could say this could be exemplified by the incident on Okinawa where the soldiers assaulted native Japanese girls from a village nearby their camp. That incident may very well lead to Japan telling the US to shut down its Army base there in the near future. This doesn’t even mention the evil impact of such behavior on the life of these girls. But, the message from this passage also has a spiritual aspect to it. The commanding officer here is God. Not getting mixed up in civilian affairs can be taken as not giving in to temptation by the adversary. When we remain in the word, we are given the discernment to know what is righteous and what is not. Jehovah Shammah, Who is always there standing by us and eager to advise us when we seek Him out, has made clear what He wants us to do. We are to trust in Him and to know Him well enough that we will know He will see us through the things that frighten us or force us to do spiritual warfare.
Jehovah Shammah does more than advise us. He also offers us His perspective and encouragement in the battles we must face. 2 COR 4: 11, 16-18, “Throughout our lives, we are always in danger of death for Jesus’ sake, in order that His life may be seen in this mortal body of ours…For this reason, we never become discouraged, even though our physical being is decaying yet our spiritual being is renewed day after day. And this small and temporary trouble we suffer will bring us tremendous and eternal glory, much greater than the trouble. For we fix our attention not on the things that are seen, but on things that are unseen. What can be seen lasts only for a time, but what can not be seen lasts forever.” No doubt, this is difficult for us. When we are in the “belly of the beast” fighting spiritual warfare and/or in pain, it is hard for us to see that our troubles are small in comparison to the blessings going through them will bring. We sometimes strike out in anger against God Himself, Who didn’t bring these troubles or illnesses. That, of course, is very inappropriate behavior. What Jehovah Shammah is commanding us to do is to reach closer to His perspective. Since we have the limitation that we can’t see the whole picture as He does, we must have faith in Him. Now, isn’t that interesting? He asks us to do the very same thing that He has from the beginning-recognize our inability to provide all we need for ourselves and our need to depend on Him! Our limited perspective doesn’t allow us to see every wonderful detail about our heavenly eternal lives right now, so we are faced with the question: Is our faith in God’s goodness and promise that heaven will be better than we can now imagine strong enough to do this? Meditate on that question today before Jehovah Shammah. Focus on the fact that we can turn to Him with this question and that He is always there for us and eager to help us answer it. Fall back knowing He is behind us, trusting that He is only too eager to catch us.
I find it very revealing that in the same passage where God is commanding the Jews to worship only Him and not to bow down before any other gods and worship them, He is also telling them, “But I show My love to thousands of generations of those who love Me and obey my laws” [EX 19: 4-6]. This gives us a critical insight into the character of Jehovah Shammah. He is a jealous God tolerating no rivals, but He is also a loving God Who wants nothing more that for us to make Him the center of our lives “writing His law on our hearts.” He wants to claim ownership of us and have us claim Him as our God in the most wonderful way for the best of reasons. That is such a demonstration of His righteousness that we should be illuminated by its brilliance! Jehovah Shammah wants us to avoid the lake of fire and sulfur. Instead, he wants us to share in the glory of His Son for eternity [RO 8: 17]. Eternity is a tough concept for mankind to understand with their limited perspective, and yet, we must have enough faith to understand that we fight spiritual warfare because it is God’s way of moving us toward perfection and bringing us closer to Him. We must take Him at His word that the time we will have to endure this suffering is so much less than eternity spent in joy and fellowship with Him!
PRAYER: O Lord, there are times when our lives seem unbearable, our pain is so great. And yet, we are never left without hope or direction when we allow You to be the Lord of our lives. You bless us with Your presence and the consistency of Your teaching. You provide us with a way to have two-way communication with You through prayer. You offer us Your perspective through the Scriptures which gives us hope, encouragement, and comfort when we are suffering or confused. In MT 11: 28-30, You commanded Your Son to say, “Come to Me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke and put it on you, and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit; and you will find rest. For the yoke I will give you is easy, and the burden is light.” As if that wasn’t enough, Dearest Jehovah Shammah, You caused Him to give His life on the cross for us afterward and followed His ascension by commanding Him to send us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. We humbly approach You today to acknowledge Your love and righteousness in bring all of that to us. Without You, we have no hope. With You, our suffering and burdens are lifted by seeing them the way You do. While we never deserved it, we are more than grateful for the grace You extend to us and offer You our adoration, worship, loyalty, trust, obedience, honor, glory, praise, and thanksgiving. We claim You as our One and Only God, our Jehovah Shammah. In Christ’s holy name, amen.
Tomorrow, Jehovah Shammah commands me to write about the lessons others have taught us about our need to be dependent on Him. His love for us is so great that He has stood by, never really leaving us even when mankind needed to be punished, even though He must have been sorely tempted. When Michael Boho offered his testimony in church, he moved us all by relating the grace he was offered by his parents, Mike and Anne Boho, in the face of his own unworthy decisions of the past. That was God-driven. It is how we should all feel in the light of the grace Jehovah Shammah offers us even through we never deserved it. God loves each of you and so do Peter and I.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn