He Will Save Us
“In quietness and in trust”, says the Lord, “shall be your strength.” I’ve seen lately that this kind of strength will never come from my own efforts to maintain and exude a “quiet confidence.” My own efforts will never result in this true strength of trust and faith in God, the kind He is talking about here. No matter how many times I attempt this sort of quietness and confidence on my own, I fail.
The strength He promises here comes only when I am made quiet and confident by remembering what He has done, and what He has promised to do; by resting as I meditate on His past deeds and mighty acts, both those in the Bible and those of last week. He has never failed His people.
The children of Israel tested God at Meribah, complaining that no water had yet appeared to quench their thirst. No matter that they had seen Him deliver them out of Egypt with a great and mighty arm; that they had seen the Red Sea part before them, and had known His constant presence and provision in the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. Here at Meribah they discounted all that, forgot all about it, because they wanted to. They wanted to murmur; they wanted their unbelief.
So Lord, help me to remember, and so know You as You have revealed Yourself to be. In this way I’ll be still and quiet before your mighty deeds, recounting them often to myself and to my children, and my confidence will be in You. Keep me from the unbelief of Israel at Meribah; I have seen your mighty acts before, and I know I will yet again. May I not be unbelieving. You are the God who acts; You have promised never to leave me or forsake me. In the quietness and confidence of faith in You, let my strength be found.
“For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel,
‘In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.’
“But you were unwilling, and you said,
‘No! We will flee upon horses’…
“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you,
and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.” Isaiah 30:15, 16a, 18
“It will be said on that day,
‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.’” Isaiah 25:9
July 20th, 2008 at 06:50
Jeri, this is uncanny. Exodus 7: 1-7, and Isaiah 30: 15-16 were both passages we referred to during our contentment study yesterday(besides what I mentioned in my blog).
The particular focus was Jeremiah Burroughs argument against folks who use the feeling that God has departed from them as an excuse for murmuring and wallowing in discontent. He says, “It is a very evil thing for men and women over every affliction to conclude that God is departed from them.” At that point we read the passage in Exodus.
He then makes the point that, “if God is departed, the greatest sign of God’s departing is because you are so disturbed….Your disquiet drives him from you, and you can never expect God’s coming to manifest himself comfortably to you souls, till you have gotten your hearts quiet under your afflictions.” And at that point we read Isaiah 30: 15-16 and discussed how God responds when we refuse to trust and rest in Him, and what is gained when we do rest in Him.
And rather than leave it hanging, I’ll add his last point in answer to this: “Do you find God departing from you in your affliction? Will you therefore depart from God too? Is this your help?…If the child sees the mother going from it, it is not for the child to say, ‘My mother is gone yonder and I will go the other way’; no, but the child goes crying after the mother. So should the soul say, I see the Lord is withdrawing his presence from me, and now it is best for me to make after the Lord with all my might, and I am sure this murmuring humour is not making after God, but by it I go further and further away from God, and what a distance there will be between God and me within a little while!”
All these miles between us and God has us on the same page!
July 20th, 2008 at 19:04
BEAUTIFUL!
July 21st, 2008 at 06:01
Laurie,
It is neat that we’re studying and thinking along the same lines. Sometimes we need a lot of help to enter that rest He calls us to. You’d think the opposite, that it should be easy to rest and trust in Him. But it’s a great battle sometimes; we only cry out to Him when we’ve come to the end of our own efforts. It never ceases to amaze me how faulty our remembrance of God’s faithfulness is (of course we make it much worse by prayerlessness and carelessness!)
Jan,
Thanks my sissy! You are on that same page, too, I know. I will call you tomorrow…
July 21st, 2008 at 07:17
No, it isn’t easy. That’s probably why the writer of Hebrews says, “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, that no one fall by the same sort of disobedience.” (4:11) Striving to rest - what a strange thing - like “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” - like so much of the Christian life.