What a year last week was, huh? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been stressing out like crazy. Just to give you a glimpse… 2020 (need I say more?), my guy didn’t win (and my other guy is going to a runoff), my job is going away, I can’t find an apartment, and I’m supposed to be getting married in January. Those are just a handful of the stressors I have at the moment. [screams internally]
I know, I know, I handle things like a champ. But don’t let that fool you! I’m a wreck! 😊
You see, I spend a lot of time trusting in myself, “you got this, Matty,” “c’mon, Matty,” “you’ve seen pole-vaulting done before, Matty,” and sometimes that’s enough. But then other times it isn’t, and that’s where I fall on my face.
In all honestly, I’ve never tried pole vaulting (but does using a tree limb to cross a stream count?). I imagine that I would be very much—how you say?—not good at it. And thus, I don’t often put myself in positions where pole vaulting is a necessary skill (I know I look like an Olympian, but that’s just my physique).
However, sometimes I don’t always have an option. Sometimes there’s just a pole that needs vaulting (that sentence makes sense, right…? Have I taken the metaphor too far? Maybe…)
Pole vaulting aside, there’s tons of areas of life which I don’t feel prepared, up to speed, ready for—areas where I don’t feel like I am enough. And, sure enough, there are tons of areas of life for which I am not enough! How bout that, huh!
These areas get in my head and make me think thoughts that really don’t do anything at all to help me—“you’ll never make it,” “you’re just a kid—a thirty year old kid,” you’re a loser, with nothing to offer.” Basically, the thoughts are kinda jerks. And they saunter on over to my you-can-do-it thoughts and push them, tease them, and steal their lunch money. This makes my happy thoughts sad.
Next thing I know, I am drowning in depression and despair, wondering how I’m going to make the next day work.
I mean, how am I supposed to handle these things? I’m not smart enough! I’m not strong enough! Heck, if we’re gonna revisit pole vaulting, I’m not even light enough!!
I’m just not enough!
How can I deal with no job, no home, no wedding? How can I deal with a country that’s going the way of so many countries before it, diving headlong into the open arms of tyranny and socialism? How can I deal with a Church that is divided and confused? How can I deal with… How can I deal???
The world is too much! What do you want from me world?? What do you want from me God????
How am I supposed to handle these things? They’re too big for me! They are beyond me! They are too high for me!… They are too high… I cannot attain… “Such knowledge”… “I cannot attain”… Where have I heard that before..?
Where…?
Where……
“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to Heaven, You are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest parts of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me and Your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, ‘surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be as night!’ even the darkness is not dark to You, O Lord. And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.”
As I remember these words from King David, in the 139th Psalm, I am also reminded of another phrase: “The Lord! The Lord!…” from Exodus 34:
So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, a forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.” And God said, “Behold, I am making a covenant…”
Our God abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness to His people. He will provide all they need, and He will protect them. It may not always look like we hope, but it is always good.
And if ever we doubt God’s faithfulness, He reiterates how faithful He is even in His expression of judgement upon the wicked. If He will remember iniquities to the third and fourth generations, then He is a God who is faithful to His own holiness. He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.
So then, why do I fear evil men? Why do I dread what the guilty may do to me? Why do I fear my OWN guilt?
Do I even now have guilt? I don’t believe I do. It was taken from me. Placed upon Christ Jesus, through the miracle of what the theologians call “double imputation” (He gives me His righteousness and perfection, and He takes my sin and guilt before the Father), but what I just call grace. I have been saved from my own guilt and sin, from my own lack of righteousness, from my own inability to deal.
I have a holy Father, a loving Brother, and an indwelling Spirit, all of whom are working together at every moment to draw me into closer and deeper fellowship with them. This. Is. My. God.
He. Will. Not. Let. Me. Go.
So yeah, it’s been one heck of a year. For some of us, it’s been a heck of a life! But, I have a God… no… I have THE God. I have the Creator of all things, the Alpha and the Omega, who was, and is, and is to come. I have Him! Or, more rightly… He has me.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27)
If, today, I am faced with trials that I do not know how to handle, mountains that I have no strength to climb, poles over which I cannot vault, I will not despair. I have Christ.
I may have rocky roads ahead… But I have Christ.
I may not have a job in a month… But I have Christ.
I may have pain and physical limitations… But I have Christ.
I may have to struggle to eat and live… But I have Christ.
I may have to delay my marriage to the girl of my dreams… But I have Christ.
I may have fears and trepidations about the direction of my home and nation… But I have Christ.
I may have broken relationships and people who despise me for my beliefs and actions… But I have Christ.
I may have dreams and hopes in this world that will never be met… But I have Christ.
I may have deep personal struggles, and I may fight against sin like crazy, and I may feel like the darkness is pressing down on me when I lie awake at night… But I have Christ.
I may be the world’s worst pole vaulter… But I have Christ.
Dear friend, it doesn’t matter what this world is putting us through, so long as we have the hope of our eternal calling, the promise of new life and glory, the light of the world, the Lamb slain before the foundations of the earth—Jesus, the Son of God.
Trust in Him.
Don’t trust in yourself.
Self is a very bad person to trust in. (Trust me. I don’t!)
Trust in Him.
Trust in Him!
TRUST IN HIM!!!
…and no other.
Beyond the Garden 