Psalm 18:32 “God gives me strength for the battle. He keeps my way secure.” Today's episode talks about how God protects us. He gives us strength to make it through any battles that we might be facing. God also secures our way. He makes a way where there is not way. He secures a way even if we can't see the way until we get there. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
We Are Protected
Psalm 18:32 “God gives me strength for the battle. He keeps my way secure.”
This verse came to me from a challenge that we received in Big Life mentoring this past week. Pamela Crim gave us a list of 14 Bible verses that tell us who God says we are. Our job was to read one verse each day and to pray with it. Read it out loud and really think about what it says. She encouraged us to go online to look up the verse in many different translations. Have you done that before? Have you taken a verse and then checked the other translations to see what words they use? I do this often and I am always surprised with the words the various translations use. I know they are all saying the same thing and yet some just hit me more than others. If you haven’t tried this before, or you haven’t done it often, might I suggest you give it a try? I think you will find you like reading the various translations. The website I use to do this is Biblegateway.com. However, there are several different ones you could use.
Today’s verse tells us that we are protected. It begins with the sentence, “God gives me strength for the battle.” This is important to know as God does give us strength for our battles. Sometimes we look at the fight we have ahead of us and we are sure that we don’t have the strength to fight it. We might be looking at a really long custody battle, divorce proceedings, a long medical journey, whatever it may be and we know we aren’t strong enough for it. Have you ever felt like this, like the road ahead is too hard, too long, too steep, too painful and that you just don’t have the strength for it? I get it, life is hard. I know so many who are struggling right now. So many who have way more to handle than any one person ever should.
The important thing to keep in mind is that we are not in this alone. You are probably right, your situation is more than you can handle on your own, which is why you are lucky that you are not on your own. You have your heavenly Father who is providing you with the strength you need each day. I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like He is giving you enough strength. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like you have enough to keep fighting and yet with each new day comes a renewed strength. He is constantly filling you up so that you can fight your battles. You might not feel as if you are full of strength and yet you do keep going, you do keep fighting so you can see He is giving you strength.
He keeps my way secure. I think this means that God always makes sure there is a way. God is a way maker and so we don’t have to worry about coming to a point where we are stuck at a dead end where there is no way out. I know it feels like we get to this point sometimes. I know we can reach a point where we can’t see a way out. The way out is not always one that we can see or that we can understand. God can make a way where there isn’t one. This can happen in several different ways.
I read about a person who was getting sued because he did not read the contract carefully and he was going to lose everything. He knew he didn’t really have a leg to stand on as he did sign the contract and yet he prayed for God to intervene anyway. The lawsuit just went away. It was like it never happened and he never heard anything more about it. There have been people who have been told they or their family member was going to die. They had some illness, like cancer, and there was nothing else the doctors could do for them. Their family members prayed anyway and God healed them. He took away their illness completely. That is a way forward that we didn’t see ahead of time and we might not have even believed it before seeing it.
I have heard many stories of people who were stuck in a situation and couldn’t see any way out of it. There have been numerous times when my parents were in situations where they couldn’t see a way out and yet they trusted that God had one and he never let them down. One of these is when they were asked to watch a friend’s 10 children on top of their own 11 children. They new it was important to this friend and so they said yes. However, they didn’t really have any food to feed their own children, let alone 10 others. They didn’t let this stop them from saying yes. They new that even though they couldn’t see a way that the Lord would provide a way because He always does.
My parents prayed for an answer to this problem they had and before they were even done praying there was a knock at the door. One of their neighbors was at the door asking if my parents could use some food. You see their father had just moved in with them unexpectedly and they didn’t have enough room in the cupboards for all his food as he had just gone grocery shopping before realizing he would need to move in with them. My parents gratefully accepted. They noticed that there was pasta and sauce in the bags. They were talking about how they could have spaghetti if they only had some ground meat. The next thing they know there is a knock at the door and it is a different neighbor. This neighbor was asking if my parents could use some meat? You see this guy had just gone hunting with a friend and they filled their fridges and freezers and still had some meet left over that they just didn’t have the room to store. Guess what was among this meat they were given? Yep, you guessed it, ground meat. They now had plenty of food to feed not only their kids, but the 10 they were babysitting as well.
This is not something they could have seen coming. The path was not neatly laid out in front of them. They said yes to watching the kids even though they didn’t know how they would feed them. I think God likes it when we do this. I think He likes it when we step out in faith knowing that He keeps His promises. I don’t know if my parents knew this specific verse or not and yet I do know they trusted God to protect them and to show them the way out of their situation. You can do the same. You can trust that God is protecting you. He is giving you strength for the battle and keeping your way secure. That is a promise you can stand on.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to know we are protected by you. Help us to feel that protection. Help us lean into you and not to worry about what might happen. Lord, help us to trust that you have secured our way. Help us to step out in faith knowing you will provide a way even if it is one we can’t see ahead of time. Help us to trust you Lord. We love you, you are amazing! You have always come through for us in the past and we know you always will. We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Bodly With Jesus. I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Just a reminder if you want to be receiving my newsletter you can sign up on my website walkboldlywithjesus.com. (Click Here) Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!