A Confidant of The Almighty!

Do you ever wonder why God appears to speak so clearly to other people about your own situation? In the early days it seemed like I was the only one who did not know God’s will for Gail and her cancer. To be honest, I did not know what to pray for and whether the course of treatment we were following was the right one. It was starting to get me down.

One morning, therefore, I strode into my office, closed the door and vowed to stay put until I had heard from God. So there!

In my office, I have this ESV Through-the-Bible- in-a-Year Bible. Each day of the year is marked in the margin, indicating which passages to read – an OT reading, a psalm, and a NT reading. This way, you get to read the OT once a year and the psalms and NT twice. I started early last year, and I am currently on September the 13^th! It’s a good thing my eternal security doesn’t rest on this.

Anyway, I decided to do what I usually do when I first sit down at my desk in the morning. So I picked up the ESV Bible and read the psalm. Then I turned to the OT reading, which was in proverbs ... chapters 3 and 4. The title of Chapter 3 jumped out at me: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart”. God had already been talking to me about trust through Psalm 84 (see my previous blog), so now He had my attention.

I began reading. I knew what was coming. Perhaps you do to. In verse 5 and 6 it says: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and He will make your paths straight”.

So I was on the right track. God had already been teaching me to trust Him in our situation. Further, my make-the-present-moment-count-for-God paradigm (previous blog) could be paraphrased “in all your ways acknowledge him”.

But I could see one more step that I needed to take, a step towards solving my original conundrum. I needed to begin seeing our situation through the lens of divine understanding. I would still be using my own “eyes”, but I would be looking through glasses provided by God.

But how could I enter God’s understanding of our situation – especially His specific understanding? Hmm ... I carried on reading. It wasn’t long before I found the answer in verse 32, which says that “[God] takes the upright into his confidence”. It would be hard to describe how these words touched me the moment I read them. God takes the upright into His confidence. He confides in the upright.

Now though I sin, in Christ I am upright. With His help, I walk without conscious rebellion, and I seek to acknowledge Him in all my ways. So God will take me into His confidence. And note that it is God who takes the action here. God will bring me into His confidence about our life and Gail’s cancer. And so He has, but that is another story.

Cheers for now  -Ian