God can do it again

"For you have rescued me from my troubles and helped me to triumph over my enemies." - Psalm 54:7

There is beautiful joy in knowing that God has delivered us from difficult circumstances in the past. This knowledge helps us to look into the future with a quiet trust and an assurance that is hard to match. 

Of course, it doesn't remove the present trials from us, but we can come to experience a calmness (or peace that passes all understanding) when we learn to trust in Christ.

Thought: Recount how God has delivered you in the past and then trust him for what lies ahead. 

Living in Grace

D3LM3

Peacemakers and Helping those in trouble

"Consider the blameless, observe the upright;
    a future awaits those who seek peace.
³⁸ But all sinners will be destroyed;
    there will be no future for the wicked.

³⁹ The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord;
    he is their stronghold in time of trouble.
⁴⁰ The Lord helps them and delivers them;
    he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
    because they take refuge in him." - Psalm 37

As I reflect on this part of Psalm 37, I am reminded of two parts in the Gospels. The first one is when the Psalmist says, "a future awaits those who seek peace" - I was wondering if it is possible to link this up with the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:9.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." 

The other part is from verse 40, which pointed me to the passage in John 8, where Jesus delivers the women caught in adultery from the hands of the religious fanatics - all they wanted to do was stone her, but Jesus saw her plight and rescued her from their grasp.

Do these verses speak to you at all today?

Living in Grace

D3LM3

God is ...

When David was going through a tough time he reminded himself, as well as the people of Israel, what God was really like. He used some delightful word pictures in Psalm 144 to describe Yahweh.

"He is my loving ally
and my fortress,
my tower of safety,
my deliverer.
He stands before me as a shield,
and I will take refuge in him." - Psalm 144:2

Pcik one of this images of God and dwell on this today.
May God bless you and keep you.

Living in Grace
D3LM3

Liberation is not deliverance

It was Victor Hugo who once said, "Liberation is not deliverance."

And he was spot on!

If you look at the human race, you will see how this has played out in almost every instance. People rightly fight for liberation and the ideals we strive for are usually just and fair, however somehow we lose our way when we taste our liberation.

Take the Israelites as a case in point. They longed for Liberation and when Moses led them towards the Promised land they realised that they were still enslaved to their sins and selfishness. Liberation from the Egyptians had not brought deliverance from the sin in their hearts.

Take our own beloved country, South Africa, as another case in point. We fought against the evil of Apartheid and pursued freedom for all people in our nation. This was a JUST cause and liberation was deserved for millions of disadvantaged South Africans. However, in celebrating our liberation we forgot that we had not experienced deliverance from the evil in our hearts. In a sense, Freedom does not deliver us from our own 'demons'. In fact, all it does is lull us into a false sense of victory and soon our 'demons' eat us from the inside out. 

In my opinion there is only one person who can LIBERATE us and also DELIVER us - His name is Jesus Christ.

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." - Galatians 5:1

Here are another few quotes to chew on as we reflect on our Freedom. Have a blessed FREEDOM DAY.

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." -Ronald Reagan

"There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires." - Nelson Mandela

Living in Freedom

D3LM3