Many of us have a large gap in our understanding of what it means to be wholly saved. We know that there was a moment in our past when we placed our trust in Christ and He immediately pardoned our sin and made us His very own. We know we have been justified. There is also the confidence that there will be a moment in the future when we leave this world and enter into His actual presence. This confidence in a future fullness of deliverance is unquestionable in our hearts, and serves as our hope and hunger. The past is forever settled and the future is completely guaranteed. But what about the present? What are we thinking about this important parenthesis between what has already been accomplished and what is most assuredly awaiting us? Our faith in Jesus Christ has prepared us for life after death, but what are we making of life before death? This earthly journey is a vapor that God has granted to us so that we may experience something that angels & unbelievers cannot experience: the life of faith and learning via our experience the unassailable goodness of God.
“And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?” – Daniel 3:15
Three Hebrew exiles were standing before an enraged king who had commanded them to worship him. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to do so they were sentenced to death. Nebuchadnezzar was not about to be rivaled by the God of these men, so he breathed out threats of slaughter. He defied them to believe in the present moment that their God would act on their behalf. His very question listed above was meant to intimidate them, foster doubt in them, create panic in them and to shrink down their God to a pocket-sized deity which King Nebuchadnezzar would devour. Though we have never been in this exact setting before, we certainly know what it means to wonder if the God who has settled our past and secured our future will choose to move on our behalf in the present. This is the testing of our faith.
I encourage you to spend some time diagnosing the degree to which you are currently trusting God. Move beyond the things that you are currently handling on your own. I’m not sick, so it’s easy for me to say I’m trusting God with my health today. Balancing the checkbook this morning, I saw that I have daily bread plus many more days of bread in the pantry, so I it’s no stretch for me to say I can trust God with my physical needs. Christians, we are skilled at singing His praises in those areas that are in order – but what about that place that is still beyond your fingertips? There’s that thing in your life that is still disjointed, out of your power to control or fix, on the edge of falling apart, and seemingly going unaddressed by your God. It is in this place that the same voice behind Nebuchadnezzar’s accusation hisses in your own ear and says, “Who is the god that will deliver you out of this one?”
Here is where you discover the degree of your faith, the confidence in the goodness of your Savior, the tenacity of your trust in His love for you and the assurance that His thoughts and intentions toward you are consistent with His promises. Here is where you find out if you serve the God who is active in the present. You don’t need faith for yesterday because it’s a closed chapter – it’s known, it’s complete, it’s history. You don’t need faith for your ultimate future because it is promised, iron-clad, written out and precisely defined – God has placed His own credibility on the certainty of your destiny. It’s not your origination that demands faith, nor is it your consummation. It’s the journey from the former to the latter. And the enemy defies you to trust God along the way.
So what is it that you are struggling to believe Him for? Where is it that you find yourself exposed as one who is wrestling with unbelief? You are no exception to this plague on us – we are consistently being defied to trust the One who is impeccably reliable. We are being tempted to doubt the One who has never fallen short. His majestic goodness is being accused to us of being little more than fickle and capricious. Satan hates it when you trust God so he fights it with all his terrible might. Yet God fights harder. God remains true. God is not intimated. God laughs at the lies of your enemy and will prove Himself yet again that He is not some distant deity to you but, rather, a loving Father who is walking beside you. You can acknowledge the defiance of the enemy who asks you concerning your Deliverer. But don’t ever believe him. He’s a liar and God is going to expose him yet again when He comes through for you at the door of your own fiery furnace. The God who secured you in the past, and will perfect you in the future, is the exact same God with the exact same commitment according to the exact same power who is with you this very moment. He is the God who will deliver you.
I can’t begin to explain how much this resonated with my Spirit today! I have been struggling with these very questions. What about the here and now God? What about all these present struggles? Thanks for reminding me that our God is the God of the present! He has things under control, even if it doesn’t look like it, feel like it , or seem like it. Even when the enemy is screaming in our ear that He can’t or won’t deliver you . He can and will deliver! Thanks for the encouragement Jeff, beautiful message!
The pureness you bring here defies all my logic. I find at times I have disbelieving more than I am believing. Thank you my brother for listening and blogging what I needed to hear this day. God Bless in the Highest.