In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
–Isaiah 63:9
“Doesn’t God care what I’m going through?”
Have you ever heard someone say that? Have you ever said it? If you haven’t it’s very likely you will someday. When you do, try to remember this: God not only knows everything that’s happening in every square inch of his creation, he knows every thought of every heart at every moment.
And there’s more. God not only knows every thought and emotion, but he actually enters into our own distress with us and feels what we feel. Our distress causes distress in God. Think about it for a moment. The Creator of the universe, a universe too immense even to imagine, is not only aware of our deepest emotion but feels it with us. Our pain can disturb the heart of God.
This point is magnified when we see that in the larger passage of Isaiah God is distressed by his people’s distress even though they have totally and completely failed to be his people. They richly deserved what they going through because they had been so disobedient and rebellious, even wicked. They had spit in the eye of the very one who called them out of bondage in Egypt and led them through the desert, feeding them, refreshing them, and guiding them toward the Promised Land of milk and honey.
But God felt no pleasure in punishing them. He was (and still is) like the loving parent who feels the distress of the child when under discipline.
And it’s not as if they blew it once and straightened out thereafter. The people of Israel fell time after time, rebelled repeatedly, turned away from God in the foolish pursuit of selfish and silly things so many times we often say, “Why would God keep putting up with this? Why doesn’t he just throw in the towel and dump these clowns once and for all?”
There was absolutely no reason why God would or should stick with his people. There never has been, except for one quality of his own character. He’s loyal and loving to a fault.
We can be thankful that the people of Israel behaved as they did because we can take hope in the fact that God remains faithful to all those he loves, even when they (we) aren’t faithful to him. Isn’t it a great relief and comfort that God’s people did as badly as they did and yet enjoyed his unbelievable loyalty? It’s a reassurance to us when we feel that we haven’t done much better than they did.
And here is the reason to remain positive: In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. It had nothing to do with the quality of their performance. God stayed true to his people just because of his love and mercy and for no other reason. Just as the ancient people of God looked into the heavens and saw the same sun, moon, and stars — ever stable and reliable — so we can look into the sky and see the same today, representing the ever merciful and loving, ever faithful and true God, ever ready to rescue and save.
Thanks be to God.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
–Romans 12:21
This would be only a nice religious saying if it weren’t for the powerful life principle embedded in it. Few seriously doubt that evil exists in the world and those who do aren’t to be taken seriously. The only real question that lies before us is what to do about it. Do we respond to it in kind, or do we throw it off balance?
We aren’t talking so much about forming national or international policy here (although it’s not excluded), rather we’re speaking of what real individuals in real life daily situations can do concretely about evil. How should we respond to evil directed against us?
Evil is like an electric current. It flows from one person to another when the circuit is closed and stops flowing when the circuit is open. How do we open the circuit? We don’t allow it to move through us to the next person. If we hear unsubstantiated, destructive gossip about our neighbor, we don’t pass it on. It stops with us. If someone insults or wounds us, we don’t insult back or pass on our anger to another innocent person, become hard to live with, or kick the dog when we get home. In other words, we break the circuit. Don’t allow it to keep going.
For truly positive living and to maintain a positive outlook we must not allow evil behavior to change us into the likeness of those who seem to love it and live for it. End it right where it strikes. A calm or kind word goes much farther than a quick and clever (or usually not so clever) retort, as good as that may feel at the moment.
Try giving a gift to a grouchy neighbor or an extra tip to a surly waiter and see what happens. More often than not, it’ll change the situation entirely. And even if it doesn’t, it changes us. Such good-for-evil exchanges turn the tables, put you in charge of the situation, surprise the aggressor, and contribute to the general peace.
Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
–Psalm 27:14
If ever there was some tough advice to swallow, this is it: “Wait for the Lord.” But we don’t want to wait. We want what we want and we want it right now…or no later than next Tuesday! That’s what it means to be a modern person in our fast-moving, high-tech world. We don’t tolerate slow computers, slow waiters, or slow traffic. It’s just not in our blood.
But that’s not God’s way. He doesn’t mind waiting and he doesn’t mind us waiting either. In fact, he goes out of his way sometimes just to put us in situations where we can do nothing but wait. Been there? Are you there now? If so, cheer up. The Psalmist tells us to be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. If anything matures our faith it’s this: waiting for the Lord to act when no other power will do.
Read any Christian biography and what do you find there? Normally, we see that the experience of the growing believer is punctuated with frequent, and sometimes extended, periods of waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for God to step in and do what we can’t. It’s in the waiting and hoping, waiting and praying, waiting and expecting, that our faith stretches or takes quantum leaps upward.
Have you ever wondered why so often in history God waits until the last minute to step in and help his people? Because it’s in that last second, in the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour, where he gets his best work done. That’s where we stretch and grow. If God answered our prayers the very moment we first prayed, we wouldn’t grow a single millimeter. No, it’s in the waiting that keeps us dependent upon him as we experience his utter trustworthiness. Praise God for his mercy in not acting too soon!
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
–Philippians 3:13–14
If you want to keep going forward, expecting the things you’re praying for, waiting patiently for them, and not being brought down by all the negative things of the past, then this passage is written for you. Try to put yourself in the mind of the Apostle who was most likely here using imagery from a competitive race. If you want to finish the race and come out victorious at the end, then you’ll have to put aside everything bad that’s happened along the way.
Paul doesn’t mean that we can literally forget the bad, as if we should try to convince ourselves that it didn’t really happen, or that we can somehow block it all out of our memories, or pretend that it was some other way. I think he meant only that we aren’t to keep the bad in the forefront of our minds allowing it to shape our decisions and control our lives. He says that we are to focus our attention on the future, to keep our eyes on the finish line with such concentration that nothing else can capture our minds.
For example, if you’re is running a hurdle race, you can’t afford to think about the hurdle you just hit, the pain in your leg, the person next to you who fell, or the applause, shouting, or cursing coming from the crowds. Your mind must be totally focused on the tape at the finish line. It’s not that you’re totally unaware of it all, it’s only that you mustn’t let yourself be influenced or controlled by any of it. There’s something more important that should be occupying your attention.
So it is with all the mistreatment we receive, the slander of our names, the misperceptions, lost relationships, fraud, deception, and everything else that can come our way in this life. If we are to move ahead successfully and keep on praying effectively, we must not let anything control our decisions or thinking so much that we are thrown off course.
Nothing can derail us in or spiritual lives more quickly than bitterness, growing hatred, resentments, continual rehearsal of that argument we had or the abuse we received, and all the rest. We have to let it go. The only way that can happen in a healthy way is to refocus on the goal of glorifying God every time we’re tempted to stop and go over it one more time.
Of course, as with all the other important spiritual disciplines, none of this can happen unless God’s Spirit empowers us. On our own it won’t happen. With daily reliance upon his Spirit and regular positive prayer for those who caused us the injury, we can be prepared to forgive anyone. At least nothing from the past is blocking our way anymore when we are praying.
Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him. Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre. Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy. For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does.
–Psalm 33:1–4
Can you think of any reasons to sing joyfully at this very moment? If something really bad just happened to you, you probably can’t. But there is a reason to do so whether you feel like it or not. In fact, if we wait until we feel full of joyful praise to God before we actually do praise him, we might be waiting until Armageddon! There’s always something that will keep us from being joyful.
That’s why we need to learn a lesson from those who have gone before us. We praise God, sing to him a new song, and shout for joy just because he is who he is, because his word is right and true, and because he’s faithful in all he does. We don’t need any more reasons than these.
Praise is simply acknowledging who and what God is. We offer praise on the grounds of his worthiness of it. We may be staring at the magnificence of the Grand Canyon while at the same time feeling sick with the flu, but we still find ourselves saying, “What an awesome sight!” So with God. We might be going through a tough time or not even wanting to get out of bed in the morning, but we can still manage to thank God and offer him praise for all that he has done and will do.
Once we get the full picture of who God is (it doesn’t happen in one day), what he’s done for us, what awaits us, and how faithful he’s been and will continue to be, the praise part gets much easier. Time and experience teach us the discipline of praising God in spite of the things going on around us or within us. Whatever they may be, they’re temporary while God’s trustworthiness and faithfulness are permanent. Our feelings come and go, but God’s word and purpose are ever the same.
So we can stay positive and expectant even when we don’t feel like it. Maturity in faith comes when we can say in all honesty, “I don’t feel positive and upbeat today because it seems that things couldn’t be worse, but I can keep my eyes on the compass of God’s ever steady character and true word. I can know that he controls all things in fair weather or foul. The storm can’t destroy me because he won’t let it. I can’t see it yet, but I’m convinced there’s a safe harbor ahead because he promised it.”
