We'll finish today the reproduction of my first wife's study on ultimate security only in God. I can just about hear her from heaven shouting through the veil that separates heaven from earth exclaiming with exuberance, "Hey you all," (we lived in the South for 25 years), "it is greater than I ever dreamed of. I thought I had ultimate security in God while maturing on earth. This is the ultimate, ultimate security walking the streets of gold hand in hand with Abba PaPa. Come join me."
Ann continues. There is the great disparity between His thoughts and ours. We may think God caring for us means a home safe from tragedy, financial prosperity, no illness, our families doing well and no upsetting surprises. ISA 55:8-9 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. One reason I am so deeply impacted by this verse is that right after the death of our baby a friend gave me this verse .. she also bent over my bed to hug me and dropped her purse on my cesarean incision. Ouch.
God WANTS us to tell HIm our desires and needs. But many times our desires become demands and we even tell God how and when to answer them. ( By the way, after I got over my pout with God about Diane DeShazo's death, I began asking again, trying not to demand). PHIL 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
When God says He will be with us (in the flood) and lift us up on a rock -or through the fire, He doesn't promise there will be no flood nor fire. God, knowing the end from the beginning looks at the higher good rather than what we often see as good. His perfect law of love may often include treatment which doesn't appear loving. It may be hard for me to see how years of struggle with cancer for someone could be for her highest good from her LOVING FATHER but that doesn't make that untrue.
FOR GOD IS TRUE WHEN EVERY MAN IS FALSE. That is why Job could say in His distress - "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." We are to trust the character of God rather than what we see or experience. Humbling ourselves under the sovereign hand of a Good God is basic to our security.
In review, we can look to God to meet our deep emotional needs; feeling certain and safe in the arms of God, feeling accepted and beloved, complete in Him; not needing to perform, compete or compare with any other, not needing to control or manipulate others; but GROUNDED in our relationship with God... this is the essence of our personal security and is vital to our enjoyment of God.
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"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," has not before struck me in this way: "I will often not make sense to you. You will be utterly perplexed by me at times. You will not quite get what I am doing. This is because you are not me, and I am not you. You are not like me, and I am not like you." To hear it from Him, when just two nights ago, I told him in understandable frustration that "I just don't know how to deal with you," is a source of justification for me - a source of vindication. God Himself has vindicated my ignorance and confusion, instead of condemning it. I so often feel that both the world and the church DO condemn my lack of understanding, and encourage me to deal with it by pretending it doesn't exist, with a sort of insinuation that to be confused by God is a sin. I just started a blog of my own -
http://tsofe.blogspot.com/
In response to what you can hear Anne saying from beyond the veil, I say to her, "Sister, do I ever want to."
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