Susanna's Rescue: Let's Go to Him

“If Job’s friends had remained dumb and reverent with what they did not understand, as they did during the first seven days, they would have been a great sustaining to him. They too would have approached the place Job ultimately reached and would not have been rebuked by God.”

- Remaining dumb and reverent with what we do not understand during this lockdown is probably the best response to the world's insanity.

“We are apt to forget that there is always an element in human suffering never there before. ”

- The covid pandemic with all its vaccines, mandates, political fallout, etc. around the world has certainly introduced that element in human suffering never there before.

“The biggest benediction one man can find in another is not in his words, but that he implies: “I do not know the answer to your problem, all I can say is that God alone must know; let us go to Him.”

- Let's stop trying to figure things out and trust that God alone knows; so let's go to Him.

“...all they did was to take to “chatter-magging” and telling Job that he was wrong.”

- Isn't that what we do on Facebook and Twitter? "Chatter-magging"?  I like that.

“If redemption is not the basis of human life, and prayer man’s only resource, then we have “followed cunningly devised fables”...

“We are not intended to understand life. Life makes us what we are, but life belongs to God. If I can understand a thing and can define it, I am its master.”

Excerpts From Our Ultimate Refuge Oswald Chambers

Susanna's Rescue: From the Cruel Power of Tyranny

The word “tyranny” is often used to describe life under the power of the devil. A tyrant not only has power, but uses that power in ruthless, wicked, and cruel ways.

Today's "global reset" ideology and policies are the devil's choice of tyranny.  Climate change, critical race theory, and the covid pandemic with its lockdowns and mandates are just a few of the modern day means of slavery that the devil uses to exercise his ruthless, wicked, and cruel power over life in this world.  Elite global leaders and their minions are the devil's appointed global tyrants who want to use their power to rule our lives and constrain our actions to follow their will and desires. 

Will the Lord set us free from this political tyranny?  Will He hear our cry for deliverance as He did for the Israelites under Pharaoh's tyranny?  Will God break the power of the global elites over us and set us free with His "outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment"?

Whether or not we witness such a deliverance in our lifetime will be God's sovereign decision, not ours.  But for the time being, let this current crisis point us to our ultimate and greatest need of deliverance - deliverance from the source of this tyranny - the tyranny of the devil. 

The Lord sets his people free from the tyranny of the devil. Since our first parents trusted the serpent over God, we have lived in slavery to sin. The cruel power of Satan ruled our lives and constrained our actions to follow his will and desires. In our weakness, we cried out to the Lord. God promised to deliver his people. God kept his promise.

But note: God's deliverance is only for His people.  Christ has set His people free. Though they still struggle against sin and face temptation and spiritual assault, their victory is secure in Christ who rose from the grave and broke the power of Satan.

So, the question before each one of us is - are we one of God's people?  Has Christ set you free?  Despite the outcome of the current political tyranny we are experiencing, do you have the secure victory in Christ who rose from the grave and broke the power of Satan over your life?  If not, why not?

Christmas is the celebration of Christ's coming into the world to set us free from the tyranny of the devil.  May you receive the most precious gift that God has given the world - the gift of being set free from your prison, so that you may praise His name. This Christmas will you join the righteous who will gather about you because of Christ's goodness to you? I hope and pray so.

Susanna's Rescue: Setting All Things Right, Even Us

Praying for God’s will to be done does not include an exception clause. It means us. It means placing God’s will ahead of ours, even when it may cause suffering in our lives, and trusting his will, even if we think we have a better way of doing it ourselves. It will not always be easy, our Lord Jesus can attest to this. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is a prayer with astounding hope for the future, that God will finally set all things right, even us.

Excerpt From Our Only Comfort Stephen C. Shaffer

At the dawn of Creation, angels were singing along with the stars. And when God announced a new creation, the coming of the Christ child, angels were singing again. Angels apparently get excited about new creations.

Jesus mentions another time that angels sing. He puts it this way, “There is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents” (Luke 15:10). Another new creation!

Have you made the angels start singing?

Angels from the realms of glory,

Wing your flight o’er all the earth;

Ye who sang creation’s story,

Now proclaim Messiah’s birth:

Come and worship, come and worship,

Worship Christ, the newborn King.

JAMES MONTGOMERY

It is a trying thing to continue with a man who persists in giving an abstract supposition as a concrete fact.

When problems are pressing very hard there is always someone who brings a suggestion of “if,” or “but,” or “how,” to take us off the track. If our problems can be solved by other men, they are not problems but simply states of confusion. 

A gospel based on preconceived notions is merely an irritant. 

Excerpts From Our Ultimate Refuge Oswald Chambers

Susanna's Rescue: Can God Put His Honor in Our Keeping?

We have the idea that prosperity, or happiness, or morality, is the end of a man’s existence; according to the Bible it is something other, namely, “to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever.”  When a man is right with God, God puts His honor in that man’s keeping. 

Job was one of those in whom God staked His honor, and it was during the process of His inexplicable ways that Job makes his appeal for mercy, and yet all through there comes out his implicit confidence in God. “And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me,” said our Lord (Matthew 11:6).

There are many loved ones who are in the hospital suffering from covid and the adverse effects of the shot. We need to appeal to God for His mercy on their behalf.  

For the families who are suffering, are you right with God?  If so, can God put His honor in your keeping?  Will you maintain your implicit confidence in God through this inexplicable ordeal?

...we must beware in our attitude toward people who are suffering that we do not blunder by imagining our point of view to be the only one. 

The revelation of redemption given through our Lord Jesus Christ is retrospective in our day; in the Old Testament it is prospective. Job goes down to the heart of the problems that make the redemption necessary, while Bildad, with his incessant questioning and pious dealing with the problems, is really shirking the whole thing.

Getting at the truth behind the covid nightmare requires exposing a mountain of lies.  But getting to the truth behind suffering requires a spiritual wisdom that comes only from God.  Only God's redeemed people can understand and direct their suffering loved ones to the necessity of redemption through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Excerpts From: Oswald Chambers. “Our Ultimate Refuge.”

Susanna's Rescue: No Ordinary Misery

Most of us take our salvation much too cheaply. There is no hope for anyone on the face of the earth, unless God does something for him. 

One result of the covid pandemic will be just this, that when a man faces things he knows, despair is inevitable unless there is room for God to perform His almighty acts. 

This line of things may sound foreign to us because we do not think, we are too contented with what we are; we have not been desperately hit. 

Misery is an exquisite degree of torture from which there seems no relief; it is very rare. Job suffered in this way, and many people are doing so today on account of the covid bioweapon war.

That is why the book of Job is included in the Bible. His words are not the expression of ordinary misery and melancholy, they are the expression of a man face to face with the foundation of human life, which is tragic.

The pandemic bioweapon war has proved that the basis of things is what Job discovered it to be—tragic, and men are being driven to realize the need for the redemption. Facing things as they are will reveal the justification of God in the redemption. 

No amount of sacrifice on the part of man can put the basis of human life right: God has undertaken the responsibility for this, and He does it on redemptive lines. 

When we have come to the place of seeing Jesus Christ, then He can trust us with the facing of sin.

Adapted Excerpts From: Oswald Chambers. “Our Ultimate Refuge.” 

Susanna's Rescue: Stars and Lilies

The question for each of us to ask ourselves is this: Would I recognize God if He came in a way I was not prepared for—if He came in the bustle of a marriage feast, or as a carpenter?

Would I recognize God if He came in the drudgery of laundry or changing a diaper, or as a professional floor cleaner? 

The characteristics that are manifested when God is at work are self-effacement, self-suppression, abandonment to something or someone other than myself...

If anyone has figured out how to manifest those characteristics on social media such as Facebook and Instagram, please let me know.

When our Lord said to the disciples, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19), His reference was not to the skilled angler, but to those who use the drag-net—something which requires practically no skill; the point being that you do not have to watch your “fish,” but you have to do the simple thing and God will do the rest. 

It's often the seamstress, the plumber, the local pharmacist, the restaurant server, the custodian, the hairdresser - those who quietly and faithfully follow God in the "simple" routines of life - who lead others to recognize Jesus.    

Who are the people who have really benefited from you? They are never the ones who think they do, but those who are like the stars or the lilies, no notion of the prig (superior-self righteous) about them.

Can we as a church stop using the buzzword "intentional"?   My mother was gifted in doing the routine household chores without complaint and without being "intentional"; she just did them - laundry, ironing, meals, cleaning, dusting, sewing, etc. She did the "simple" things and God blessed her and our family with the enjoyment of a clean house (which was a challenge with four kids), clean clothes, clean sheets on the bed, family times around the dinner table, school lunches, and pretty hand sewn Easter dresses for me and my sisters. My mother "unintentionally" became one of God's "stars and lilies".

There is suffering before which you cannot say a word... all you can do is to remain dumb and leave room for God to come in as He likes. The point for us is, “Do I believe in God apart from my reasoning about Him?” 

I truly believe that the smartest response to today's world events is is to remain dumb and leave room for God to come in as He likes.  I don't know about you, but as a parent and living in our social media world, my biggest temptation is to "say or post a word" that leaves no room for God to come in as He likes. 

Theology is a great thing, so is a man’s creed; but God is greater than either, and the next greatest thing is my relationship to Him.

Excerpts From: Oswald Chambers. “Our Ultimate Refuge.” 

Susanna's Rescue: A Crazed Van in a Christmas Parade

Our Lord said that His Church would be so completely taken up with its precedents and preconceptions that when He came it would be “as a thief in the night”; they would not see Him because they were taken up with another point of view.

Today's church around the world, and in particular America, has had every controversy and crisis thrown at her including the proverbial kitchen sink. The unrest and violence over social justice, CRT, BLM, and Antifa; the covid nightmare with deaths, disease, lockdowns, masks, mandates, and dangerous injections; the media's deluge of lies, propaganda, and censorship; and the government's unconstitutional policies that threaten the nation's very existence - just to name a few. The sheer volume of crises has blindsided the church shattering all her precedents and preconceptions of how to cope and be a light for Jesus in a world of tragedy. 

Could it be that this time of crisis is God's way of purging His Bride of political and personal points of view and social "causes" that have so completely taken up the church these last few years?  Will Christ come "as a thief in the night"?  

Or, will we be prepared to see our Lord?  

...the basis of things is not logical, but tragic. Logic and reasoning are only methods of dealing with things as they are; they give no explanation of things as they are.”

We are dealing with suffering and tragedy on a worldwide Biblical scale; and the world's "logic and reasoning" cannot explain why things are happening as they are.  How do you explain the brutal tyranny towards the citizens of Australia?  Or, a crazed van plowing down a Christmas parade in Wisconsin?  Or the tragedy of heart disease and strokes in healthy teenagers who have been injected with an untested substance?   

The world is a tragic place of darkness ruled by the prince of darkness.  We need a Comforter, a Deliverer from this darkness.  So, instead of turning to politicians, pundits, celebrities, social movements and protests, God is calling His weary church to lay down her ever changing opinions, precedents and preconceptions and turn to the comfort of "Our Ultimate Refuge" -  Christ our Savior and Lord. 

Excerpts From: Oswald Chambers. “Our Ultimate Refuge.”