Wednesday, October 8, 2008

In the Storms

"The Lord is near to the
brokenhearted and saves
those who are crushed
in spirit"
Psalm 34:18 (NASB)


Ever feel as if your world is being swept up in a storm that you can't control or ever seem to understand? Ever read something and then find out it means something different than what you thought it did? Well if this gives you any hint... this is how my life recently and my day has gone. I read this passage today and if I really wanted to, I could have easily given myself the biggest pity party you have ever seen. Instead my need to be vulnerable with God won over that one today. I began looking deeper into the context of this verse and found that when it was written David was running from Saul and ran into the camp of a king who's men he had killed a lot of over the years. To get out of this situation before someone found out about him, he decided to play as if he were a madman, hoping that the king would have mercy on him in some way. The king kicked him out of his city and David ran into the hills to hide. In a way David was lying and playing a game being someone he was not just to get out of a situation he himself had created. So when David began to write his praises to God in the following verses he had to show that he knew he was still not without sin. He loved God but he was not a perfect man and not all his troubles were going to be gone just because his life was God's. In this particular verse e-sword live describes it like this:
The phrase, "them that are of a broken heart,"
occurs often in the Bible. It refers to a condition
when a burden "seems" to be on the heart, and when
the heart "seems" to be crushed by sin or sorrow; and
it is designed to describe a consciousness of deep guilt,
or the heaviest kind of affliction and trouble.


God never promised to take away all our troubles. They will continue. But He did promise to be here with us and teach us to go THROUGH them and be there with us when we do. This is what is preparing us for our life with Him. It may be hard and sometimes it feels harder than we can handle but this is when we have to look and ask what is our part, what did we contribute to it, and what can we do to change it.

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