Some moments pass us by. Others you can look back on and understand the significance of that moment. Then there are those rare moments where you are fully aware – in the midst of the moment – that something amazing is happening. Something huge. Something…well…Divine.
One of those amazing, huge, Divine moments occurred for me in the winter of 2010. I know it was huge because rarely a day goes by that I don’t think about it.
It was a morning like hundreds of other mornings. Early. Coffee. Bible. Couch. The room wasn’t glowing. I didn’t see an angel. No audible voices. I was just reading. And then I read these words, written by David in Psalm 56:
This I know, that God is for me.
I couldn’t keep reading. I just stared at those words. Those eight amazing words. The moment got even huger (It’s a real word. I just looked it up.) as God asked me two questions. Simple questions. Simple, life-changing questions.
Do you believe this statement?
Not just a head-only belief. But a deep-down-I-know-that-God-is-on-my-side belief. I had to wrestle with that quite a bit. It might not be the same for you, but it was fairly easy for me to believe this about the big ways God was for me. He loves me. He died for me.
But that morning, what I wrestled with – and what God kept whispering to me – was all about the comparatively little things. The day-to-day things. Everything else. This is some of what He told me that morning:
- I am for you in your parenting (even when you don’t have a clue what you’re doing).
- I am for you in your work (even when it all looks so uncertain).
- I am for you in your marriage (even when you say or do the wrong thing…again).
- I am for you in your struggles. (And yes, I know the struggles you think are secrets.)
- I am for you in your doubt. (Guess what? I’m God. I can handle it.)
- I am for you in your weakness. (Look what I did with Abraham, Moses, and Peter…just to name a few.)
- The longer I sat, the more I started to believe it. Then God asked me this…
Will you spend your life living into this statement?
This is a categorically different question. It’s one thing to believe something. It’s another thing to live into it. God was asking me to wear this statement like a tattoo on my forehead. To let this question define me. Believing God is for me is a shift in identity.
The more I have internalized this statement, the more it has become the lens through which I strive to see everything. And I live more freely, more honestly, more boldly in the light of its truth.
The days I live into the truth that God is for me are the days I laugh more easily, live with greater freedom, and love with more generosity. The days I forget this truth are the days I can see only my weaknesses, my insecurities, and my failures.
It is on those days, that the God who knit me together in my mother’s womb, taps me on the shoulder and then whispers in my ear, Tomorrow. Remember this: I am for you.
Most days…I remember. And it has made all the difference.
Questions: In what area of life would believing that “God is for you” change things? What is one step you can take today to live into the truth of this statement?
