Sheltered By God

We are in the church season of Lent. This season within the church is often a time of reflection. It is a time when we can pause and take a look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves what we believe about God while focusing on our relationship with him.

On Ash Wednesday I called it a journey within a journey. Each one of us that are followers of God through Jesus should be on a journey. Lent is a 40 day journey within a journey that can give us the time to evaluate and if needed reinvigorate our relationship with God.

Our Lenten series is “Psalms for the Season.” We will be having various Psalms challenge us and remind us of the God that we follow. We start this series this week through looking at us being “Sheltered by God.” Our scripture comes from Psalm 91:1-2 and 9-16.

1 Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. 2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

9 If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,” and you make the Most High your dwelling, 10 no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent. 11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; 12 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. 13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent. 14 “Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. 15 He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. 16 With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

Let us pray

We have a God that protects us. A God that makes sure that no harm will ever come to us. A God who will take care of those who follow him. Thanks be to God. This is basically what this scripture is telling us. And to be truthful it as one of the biggest misconceptions we find in Christianity.

The messaging that once you become a follower of Jesus, God will protect you and take care of you, it works well until the first negative event happens to you, or your friend, or your relative. We can believe it until suddenly we are faced with our own hardships that we were promised wouldn’t occur.

It would be my expectation that all of us have lived through our own situation or seen that person we would state is a “good Christian” who has something horrific happen to them. A car crash, a work accident, a stage 4 cancer diagnosis and we could go on.

It is at these times that we might begin to question. We wonder if we are truly a follower of God. Is God really worth following? Why would God allow such an event to occur to us, our friend, or family member. After all Psalm 91 tells us that “no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near you.”

What we know is that in the worldly sense that this is not 100 percent true. We know of good people who had bad things occur even though they were followers of Jesus. Probably, they were better followers of Jesus than we are. We know that sometimes “life just sucks.”

Jesus himself spoke of this fallacy in Luke chapter 13 when he said of the Galileans who were mistreated by Pilate and killed and of 18 people who had a tower fall on them. He says concerning these individuals “Do you think that they were worse sinners than others?”

That is what makes this Psalm so hard for us to accept, our life circumstances tell us that this Psalm is not true. The world is a dangerous place, and God does not always protect us from the damage that can come to us or fellow believers within it.

(Transition)

I want to pause for just a moment before you decide to stone me for my anti-Christian rhetoric. I believe in prayer. I believe that God answers prayer. I believe that there are times when God does protect or heal those that follow him.

But my life experiences also tell me that this does not occur 100 percent of the time and if we are not careful we can cause more harm than good when we speak of God protecting us when the Christian next to us has something awful happen to them.

We are to be people of faith. We are to believe that God will protect and heal. We should be praying for protection from this world while at the same time praying for those who the world has hurt physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually.

(Transition)

I like the way Christian author Lysa Terkeurst in her book “It’s Not Supposed to be This Way” explains it. She states that we are living between two gardens. Humanity was created in perfection, “everything ebbed and flowed in complete harmony.” Our heart was connected one with God.

But then sin entered into the world. “The human heart was created in the context of the perfection of the garden of Eden. But we do not live there now.” She believes it is our desire to return to where our heart desires to be that leads us into “depression, anxiety, and callousness.”

“We want God to fix it all. Edit the story so it has a different ending. Repair the heartbreaking reality.” But she goes on to say that what if it is in the heartbreak that God creates something new within us? God can use our struggles to make us into someone better.

Our heart wants to return back while our soul is asking God to help. That is why Terkeurst says that we need to look towards the second garden when all things will be made new. The return of Jesus. When all things are restored.

(Transition)

There is an American Negro Spiritual that I believe offers us a great example of looking towards the “second garden. It has various names but in the book titled “The Books of American Negro Spirituals” it is called “All God’s Children Got Wings.”

The writers has the song end this way (Read from book). Those that created and originally sang this song are people that many may not have had shoes. All of them would not have gotten to decide where they were going to go. We have them through this song looking forward to that second garden when they could put on their shoes. Where they could walk wherever they wanted to walk and say whatever they wanted to say.

With that in mind the word we need to focus on in today’s scripture is “trust.” This spiritual showed the trust that these slaves had that God would eventually remove their pain and they would be able to walk all over God’s heaven.

(Transition)

What we will often find in our lives is that it is during these times of pain that our faith will increase. It is when we don’t understand but keep moving forward in our relationship with God and with those around us that we find ourselves able to persevere during life’s difficulties.

It is not that bad things are not going to happen. What this scripture is reminding us of is that God is with us on the journey. God doesn’t leave us. God cries with us when the turmoil of life begins to overtakes us.

(Transition)

We can sense that the writer has this type of relationship with God through the words that he uses to describe God. He calls him “the Most High”, “the Almighty”, “The Lord”. He uses words that express his reverence for his God.

The writer trusts that God will be his shelter during times of hardship. It is not that the ways of the world won’t cause harm, but God will help us overcome that harm. God will offer a place for us to go to heal from the pain and possibly allow for us to grow closer to him.

(Transition)

There is one way that God does protect 100 percent those that follow him all the time. We speak of this in our first reading. He wants all of us to be connected to him enough that we will be willing to put on the full armor of God.

He desires for us to decide to put on the full armor so that he can protect us “against the devil’s schemes.” The best chance that we have of overcoming the temptations that we may face is through putting on the full armor of God.

Armor is used to protect a person from an attack. If any part of the armor is missing a person becomes vulnerable to an attack in that area. This means that if we only are living our lives with a focus on a part of the armor and not all of the armor then we can expect that the devil will focus on attacking us in that area or areas of our lives.

We find six pieces of armor that Paul, the writer of Ephesians, believed was essential in order for us to be safe from an attack from the evil one. The first is an acknowledgement that we believe scripture is the truth. We find Jesus stating that he is the way, the truth, and the life.

It is essential that we believe in the truth which would mean us believing in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. The truth becomes the first part of us being protected from attacks. We are completely vulnerable without a belief in the truth.

The second is the “breastplate of righteousness.” This would be us desiring to live the way that God desires for us to live. This is a difficult one because we want to make sure that we don’t become like the Pharisees and over focus what it means to be right with God.

We need to be in communication with God to allow for us to be right with God. This is us choosing to live in the world but not of the world. We are to focus on God and his ways over the ways of the world.

We need to have feet fitted with readiness. We receive our answer on how we do this. We need to choose to follow the Gospel of peace. We have an example of how to battle the evil one. We are to follow the ways of Jesus.

It is through believing in the truth, trying to be right with God, and attempting to follow the ways of Jesus that we receive the “shield of faith.” The stronger our faith is the easier it becomes for us to overcome life’s obstacles.

Perseverance is the word that comes to mind. The example of Job losing almost everything but keeping the faith is the example. The shield of faith protects us from moving away from God when the attacks come our way.

That leads us to “The helmet of salvation.” This part of the armor reminds us that we have been saved from the power of sin. We should not allow guilt and shame to lead us to believe that we are not good enough. God decided you are good enough. You are or can be forgiven.

The last is the “sword of the Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is with us. The Holy Spirit can give us the words to say when we are open and willing to listen and respond. Jesus showed us this when he was tempted by the devil. He didn’t waver.

Jesus allowed the words of God to defend himself against the devil’s attacks. We have available to us 100 percent protection against the ways that the devil can tempt us. We have to be willing to accept the protection that God desires to give to us.

(Transition)

Our main scripture also uses the words “rescue” and “deliver.” This is an Old Testament text. That means that this is written well before the birth, life, and death of Jesus. God was “rescuing” his chosen people and “delivering” them from the troubles they were facing well before Jesus.

Jesus becomes the ultimate way that God chose to rescue and deliver not just the Jewish people but all people. It is through the death of Jesus on the cross that all people became God’s chosen people. All people were able to be delivered from the power of sin and death.

God used the horrible event of a death upon the cross. He allowed that event to serve the good of all of humanity. God attempts to not have the bad of the world hurt those that are living in the world.

He desires to shelter each person that walks the earth from the power of sin and death. He wants each person that believes in him to receive shelter from the pain and disappointment that we are facing in our lives.

He wants all people to be willing to trust him enough to be willing to follow him. He wants the decision to be made by those that don’t yet believe that they are missing something in their lives and that is a relationship with God through Jesus.

We speak in our mission statement about reaching out to those in our communities and loving all people. There is no better way for us to live this out than being the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus to those around us.

We have a message to share with the world. A message of the one who desires to protect but also to be with us through the good times and the bad times that we may face in this broken world. Let us spread the word and keep the faith. Let us be the ones that live out what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Please pray with me…