Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Devotional -Snapshot 4 - Suffering

"If the affliction should come, it will bring its own support with it." John Angell James

"Rescue me, O LORD, from evil men; protect me from men of violence, who devise evil plans in their hearts and stir up war every day. They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent's; the poison of vipers is on their lips. ...O LORD, I say to you, "You are my God." Hear, O LORD, my cry for mercy. O Sovereign LORD, my strong deliverer, who shields my head in the day of battle..." Psalm 140:1-3,6,7

I think of the Jews during the Holocaust. How I would have been pleading this Psalm over and over. I would have felt desperate to live - did they? The fear that would always surround me - how did they sleep? The plots and plans of wickedness were winning over the millions of Jews who died.

David cries out: "Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men! Preserve me from violent men who plan evil things in their hearts. ...Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked..."

Not every Jew was kept or preserved in history, nor will every Christian be. I weep for the suffering of man, I fear for the future. Even now God's beloved are dying. They are hungry, they are poor. They are rejected, they are tortured. God protected David as he made supplication to God,- but not every Jew, not every Christian.

We are not promised painless living we are promised His presence. It is enough.

"An affliction sanctified is better than an affliction removed." John Angell James

The Psalm ends with confidence in God. I look back at history or read the biographies of persecuted believers and can I still cry out with confidence: "You are my God! Hear the voice of my supplications! You are the strength of my salvation! You have covered my head in the day of battle!"?

My prayer is You will teach us to be that confident in You for the battles ahead.

Pray about your pain or an other's.

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