Psalm 139:5 “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” Today's episode reminds us that God is for us, not against us. It reminds us how great God is and how much He loves us. It talks about the song Drops in the Ocean by Hawk Nelson. It is such a good song! Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
God Is For You, Not Against You!
Psalm 139:5 “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.”
I heard this verse at the prayer group yesterday, and I instantly liked it. It made me think of when I was little, and my dad would tuck me into bed at night. He would make the covers all tight around me so I felt safe and warm. It was such a cozy feeling, and all those feelings came flooding back when I heard this verse yesterday. God is our heavenly Father. He is always there for us in a way that our real fathers might not have been. I am lucky enough to have had a great father growing up. And I am lucky enough to have him still around to be a part of my life. However, even if you didn’t have a great father growing up or in your life right now, you have a heavenly Father who is amazing.
I know sometimes it can be hard to believe that our heavenly Father is amazing, especially if we didn’t have a great earthly father. It can be hard when we look at the Old Testament and see all the things God did to see God as a caring and loving Father. I know my kids always get stuck in the book of Noah with God flooding the whole world. There were times when God’s judgment required him to do some things that I am sure He didn’t want to do. It is hard, at least for me, to reconcile that God with the God of the New Testament. The God who sent His only Son to save the sinful world. The God who would have sent His son even if it was only to save one person.
When I talk with people about how they picture God, often it is not as a loving Father. They see Jesus as loving and kind and pretty easy to talk to. However, they see God as the disciplinarian. They see Him as an older man who is sitting up in heaven on his thrown, feeling pretty high and mighty and looking down on us and waiting for us to screw up, so He can say, I told you so! It breaks my heart to hear that because I know how much God loves us. I know how much He wants us to succeed. He is not waiting for us to mess up. He is routing for us to be wildly successful. He is up there cheering us on. When we do mess up, He is there to help us through it. His heart breaks when our heart breaks.
God is rooting for you. He wants you to win. He wants you to be successful. He wants you to be able to spend eternity with Him. I think this is something many of us have trouble believing because I have heard many songs lately that have the words, “He is for you, not against you.” I don’t think it would be in so many songs if people didn’t have a hard time believing it. Songs usually speak to common areas of struggle. I promise you God is rooting for you. He wouldn’t have sent his song to die a horrible, painful death just so He could sit up in heaven and judge you, waiting for you to mess up so He can say, “I told you so.”
There are many songs that I love that show us how much God loves us. One of my favorite’s is Cory Asbury’s Reckless Love. If you don’t know that song, I highly recommend you look it up. You can even google the version with his testimony in it. He explains the Bible verse for that song and why he wrote that song. It is so beautiful. However, the song I feel the Lord wants me to share with you today is another favorite called Drops in the Ocean by Hawk Nelson. It is the song that came to mind when I wrote that God is for you, not against you. Here are the words to that song.
I want you as you are, not as you ought to be. Won’t you lay down your guard and come to Me? The shame that grips you now is crippling. It breaks My heart to see you suffering.
God does not need us to wait until we are perfect to come to Him. He is not waiting for us to be someone else, some better version of ourselves. He wants us just as we are. I love how it is asking us to lay down our guard and come to Him. How many of us struggle with that? We have our guard up, and maybe it is for a really good reason. Maybe we have been hurt a lot in this world by people who should have loved and protected us. God knows why we have our guard up, and yet, with Him, we don’t need it. He is asking us to let down our guard and just come to Him as we are. He can see the shame that has a hold on us and it breaks His heart to see us suffering so much. It breaks His heart to see us holding onto shame when He could take it all away if we just let Him.
The song goes on to say: Cause I am for you. I’m not against you. Why do we think God is against us? Why do we think He is hoping we fail? Where did this idea come from? If we look at the Bible as a whole, there is far more in there about God being a loving God who saves his people than there is about God rooting for His people to fail. Even when it comes to Sodom and Gomorrah, He was willing to save them if even ten of them were righteous, and yet none were to be found. God does not want even one of His children to perish. He is not wanting us to fail. He is for us, not against us. He is for you, not against you! Don’t believe the lies of the enemy. God is for you!!
My very favorite part of this song is:
If you wanna know how far My love can go, just how deep, just how wide. If you wanna see how much you mean to Me. Look at My hands, look at My side. If you could count the times, I'd say you are forgiven; it’s more than the drops in the ocean.
This part took my breath away the first time I really heard it. If you want to know how far my love can go, just how deep, just how wide. If you want to see how much you mean to me, look at my hands, look at my side. Man, it really hit me. God sent Jesus to save me. If I was the only one on earth, He would have still sent Jesus. Look at his hands; He has the wounds of the cross. Looks at His side, where they pierced him with a spear. He did that for me. Does that not help you to see how much God loves you?
I also love that it says, If you could count the times I’d say you are forgiven, it’s more than the drops in the ocean. Could we even count the drops in the ocean? We think God is up in heaven waiting to catch us doing something wrong, and yet this song is saying that he is up there forgiving us every time we do something wrong. He has forgiven us more times than we can even count. How amazing is that?
The song also says, “Don't think you need to settle for a substitute. When I'm the only love that changes you.” Did you know that God’s love could change you if you let it? The love that we get from others here on earth does not change us. God’s love is the only love that changes us. When we realize how much we are loved by God. When we realize He is for us and not against us, our whole world can change. We will have a confidence that those around us can’t understand. It is a confidence in who we are because of who God created us to be. It is a confidence that no matter what we have done or will do, God will always love us. He is always rooting for us and wanting us to succeed.
God is always around us. If we look back to today’s verse, it says, “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” God goes before us and behind us. He lays His hand on us and guides us. We can count on Him to always be there. We can count on Him to show us the path he wants us to take. He hems us in, behind, and in front. He is there, creating a barrier of protection around us. He is for us, not against us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each of us listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we thank you for always being there for us. We thank you for being for us and not against us. We thank you for forgiving us so often. We thank you for wanting us as we are, not as we ought to be. You are amazing. We ask you to help give us a renewal of the mind when it comes to how we see you. We ask that you help conform our minds to who you really are instead of who we might think you are. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I had a vision of Jesus, and we were following him, and we were just dancing along this road and rejoicing, following him. And he was dancing, and we were having a grand old time. The sense that I got was that no matter what we go through or the burden we have to carry, He does bring us through it. And he always gives us the joy back, and we know our joy is in him. So we'll dance our way into the kingdom someday.”