SYNOPSIS: When we are in Christ, we are kept from all harm. But doesn’t that seem like a huge overstatement? It does to me! I mean, you and I and most of the people we know have experienced harm—car wrecks, lost jobs, disease, divorce, death of loved ones, and… well, pick your poison. Ah, but is it really harm, child of God? It might hurt, and hurt a lot, but don’t we know by now that our Heavenly Father turns what is meant for evil into that which is good?
Moments with God // Psalm 121:1-8
According to this psalm, along with many other scriptures, when I am in Christ, I am kept from all harm. But doesn’t that seem like a huge overstatement to you? It does to me! I mean, you and I and most of the people we know have experienced harm—car wrecks, lost jobs, disease, divorce, death of loved ones, and… well, pick your poison.
Ah, but is it really harm, child of God? It might hurt and hurt a lot, but don’t we know by now that our Heavenly Father turns what is meant for evil into that which is good? As Joseph proclaims in Genesis 50:20,
God turned into good what you meant for evil.
Doesn’t our Lord take all things—even really bad things—and turn them into things that reveal his glory in our lives? The Apostle Paul Romans 8:28 and then again in Romans 8:38-39,
We know that all that happens to us is working for our good if we love God and are fitting into his plans. …For I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The angels won’t, and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God’s love away. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, or where we are—high above the sky, or in the deepest ocean—nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when he died for us.
Then there is what the prophet Jeremiah said to encourage the Jewish exiles, longing for a return from slavery to the freedom of their homeland, which, though written two thousand years ago, I have no problem applying to all Christians everywhere in every age,
Though you will be in captivity for decades, I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised and bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:10-11)
So, if we base our lives on God’s immutable Word, we know that all that happens to us is working for us, provided that we love God and fit into his plans.
Hasn’t he promised never to leave us nor forsake us? (Joshua 1:5) Will he not be true to his Word and walk with us even through the valley of the shadow of death? (Psalm 23:4) And when we die, didn’t Jesus himself promise that we really wouldn’t die? (John 11:25-26) He most certainly did.
It sounds to me like that no matter what, we win! Nothing can come to us that first doesn’t have to pass through the One who constantly watches over our comings and our goings. And to get to you and me, evil and harm first must pass the Divine Purpose Test: If it can’t be used for God’s glory in my life, God prohibits it from harming me. I like that, don’t you? He is watching over us and the people we care about. So, we can quit worrying and relax in the safety of his hands.
The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was held in a Nazi concentration camp in the 1940s and finally martyred by hanging, wrote from his prison cell, “Much that worries us beforehand can, quite unexpectedly, have a happy and simple solution… Things really are in a better hand than ours.”
The Lord is watching over you like a Heavenly Hawk, and nothing will escape his loving eye—not even one little detail. So be assured today that everything coming your way—good and not so good—will be used in his great transformation project to turn you into the image of his dear Son. (Romans 8:28-29)
Yeah, I like that!
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.