God’s Salvation Means His Lordship
In your distress you called and I rescued you, I answered you out of a thundercloud; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. (Psalm 81:7)
To be fatherless is to be without protection and provision. However, to have a father also brings us under his discipline and instruction. God saved Israel from Egyptian bondage, but he is not a Father who spoils his children. Immediately he tested them in the wilderness.
God not only saves and protects us, he also matures us. He is both Savior and Lord to those he calls, or he is neither.
My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. (Proverbs. 3:11–12)
The grace of God to us in Christ is lavishly poured out on us, we receive more blessings and enjoyment from God’s fatherhood than difficulty. But he also tests and tries us, and his testing means we are in his family. He strengthens us in himself so that we might endure and serve in challenging situations.
The next time you are faced with a difficulty, think of it not as sign that the Father has forgotten you, rather see it as a sign of his love and care for you. He has entrusted something difficult into your hands so that you might feel your need to grow more in his grace, to become a stronger person and a more mature Christian. We are to be “strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:1) so that we may “endure hardship” (2 Tim. 2:3).
Even in our failures there is instruction, for we find that God did not intend that we should face life on our own, rather that we would learn to live through him. When we fail to be strong in God’s grace, then we will have tried to live the Christian life in our own strength. When we find ourselves becoming bitter and angry due to difficult people, stubborn circumstances, and loneliness, even betrayals and personal attacks, then it is we especially feel our need to live in Christ, and not in ourselves. The person we find impossible to deal with is not impossible for the Spirit of Christ in us to deal with.
Failure where self is concerned in our Christian life and service is allowed and often engineered by God in order to turn us completely from ourselves to His source for our life — Christ Jesus, who never fails. We are to rejoice in our need and hunger of heart, for God says, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matt. 5:6). As we, in our abject need, consistently and lovingly look upon our Lord Jesus, who is revealed to us in the Word, the Holy Spirit will quietly and effortlessly change the center and source of our lives from self to Christ — hence for each of us it will be “not I, but Christ” (Gal. 2:20). (Miles Standford)
In our flesh we are prone to give in to difficult people and try to please them. Or to angrily confront them, not caring if we hurt them or not. Christ “would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people” (John 2:24). And Christ in us will not lead us to try and please the ungodly. He will be patient and kind but unwilling to compromise with the world.
