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.” 

Susanna's Rescue: Giving God "Elbow Room"

It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence.

There are political pundits who are calling for "Action, action, action" against the tyrannical actions of our government.  In our righteous anger we can quickly lose what is of final importance - the lasting influence of an atmosphere of trust and grace. 

Job is suffering because God and Satan have made a battleground of his soul, without giving him any warning or any explanation...Give God “elbow room”; let Him come into His universe as He pleases. 

How often I have wanted to post outbursts of anger and condemnation on social media toward those who intend to do evil with the toxic jabs and the mandates.  How often have I tried to convince my adult children of the dangers of the injections or the political tyranny that is meant to destroy our country - only to be considered a conspirator or a mom that has been in lockdown and isolation way too long.  God has often to remind me to give Him "elbow room"; to let Him come into the lives of our loved ones as He pleases.

It is a good thing to be careful in our judgement of other men. A man may utter apparently blasphemous things against God and we say, “How appalling”; but if we look further we find that the man is in pain, he is maddened and hurt by something. The mood he is talking in is a passing one and out of his suffering will come a totally different relationship to things.

There will be and are now thousands of people who are suffering from the adverse effects of this covid injection.  More and more children will suffer death, heart issues, and even infertility from this needless and dangerous injection; it is predicted that many parents will commit suicide rather than face the lifetime consequence of permanent damage to their children's health.  We have created a world of pain; a world that is becoming more and more maddened and hurt by this evil.  Let's not add to the pain by adding our judgment of other men but instead pray that out of their suffering will come a new and renewed relationship to Christ.

...we say that a man is not right with God unless he acts on the line of the precedent we have established. We must drop our measuring-rods for God and for our fellow men. 

Psalm 37 has been my go-to because the psalmist's words enable me to lay down my measuring-rod and create a lasting influence and atmosphere of trust and grace: 

1 Don’t worry about the wicked or envy those who do wrong.

2 For like grass, they soon fade away. Like spring flowers, they soon wither.

3 Trust in the LORD and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper.

4 Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires.

5 Commit everything you do to the LORD. Trust him, and he will help you.

6 He will make your innocence radiate like the dawn, and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun.

7 Be still in the presence of the LORD, and wait patiently for him to act. Don’t worry about evil people who prosper or fret about their wicked schemes.

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

Susanna's Rescue: Into a Perfect Simplicity

So long as a man has his morality well within his own grasp he does not need Jesus Christ: “For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners,” said Jesus (Matthew 9:13).

Could it be that God is using the moral rot of our nation to lead us to despair - a despair that can lead us to examine our own rotten morality and the genuineness of our personal faith?  A despair that could drive the lost to their need for the Savior? 

The teachings of Jesus Christ must produce despair, because if He means what He says, where are we in regard to it? “Blessed are the pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8)—blessed is the man who has nothing in him for God to censure. Can I come up to that standard?

Could it be that these difficult and baffling times we live in are God's hand of loving discipline - a discipline to get us to let go of our own depraved way of thinking and morality - a discipline that enables us to reach out and grasp Jesus Christ? 

When a man has been hard hit and realizes his own helplessness he finds that it is not a cowardly thing to turn to Jesus Christ, but the way out which God has made for him.

There is a passion of pessimism at the heart of human life and there is no ointment for it; you cannot say, “Cheer up, look on the bright side”; there is no bright side to look on.

The entire world is suffering the despairing effects of disease and the moral rot of wicked rulers.  There is an overarching sense of cynicism and pessimism in all of human life. There is only one cure and that is God Himself, and God comes to a man in the form of Jesus Christ. 

Through Jesus Christ’s redemption the way is opened back to yesterday, out of the blunders and blackness and baffling into a perfect simplicity of relationship to God. 

Jesus Christ undertakes to enable a man to withstand every one of the charges made by Satan. Satan’s aim is to make a man believe that God is cruel and that things are all wrong; but when a man strikes deepest in agony and turns deliberately to the God manifested in Jesus Christ, he will find Him to be the answer to all his problems.

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

Susanna's Rescue: In the Whirlwind of Disaster

Job’s attitude is, “I cannot understand why God has allowed these things to happen; what He is doing hurts desperately, but I believe that He is honorable, a God of integrity, and I will stick to it that in the end it will be made absolutely clear that He is a God of love and justice and truth."

Nothing is taught in the book of Job, but there is a deep, measured sense of someone understanding. This man was buffeted and stripped of all he held dear, but in the whirlwind of disaster he remained unblameable, that is, undeserving of censure by God.”

A healthy-minded man bases his life on actual conditions, but let him be hit by bereavement, and when he has got beyond the noisy bit and the blasphemous bit, he will find, as Job found, that despair is the basis of human life unless a man accepts a revelation from God and enters into the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

The sense of the irreparable is one of the greatest agonies in human life. Adam and Eve entered into the sense of the irreparable when the gates of Paradise clanged behind them...There are things in life which are irreparable; there is no road back to yesterday.

The basis of things is not rational, common sense tells him it is not; the basis of things is tragic, and the Bible reveals that the only way out is through the redemption.

It is always well to note the things in life that your explanations do not cover. Job is facing a thing too difficult for him to solve or master; he realizes that there is no way out.

Real suffering comes when a man’s statement of his belief in God is divorced from his personal relationship to God. 

The world sits at the feet of Christ

Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled;

It yet shall touch His garment’s fold,

And feel the heavenly Alchemist

Transform its very dust to gold.

—Whittier

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

Susanna's Rescue: In the Hand of the Adversary

All that a man possesses is at times not in the hand of God, but in the hand of the adversary, because God has never withdrawn that authority from Satan.  

It is a good thing to feel our own powerlessness in the face of destruction; it makes us know how much we depend upon God. 

When a man is in despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out, he will only get out by the sheer creative effort of God, consequently he is in the right attitude to receive from God that which he cannot gain for himself.

Job was never fundamentally impatient with God; he could not understand what God was doing, but he did not charge God with foolishness; he hung on to the certainty that God would yet be cleared, and so would he.

Our Lord was meek towards His Father’s dispensations for Him, but not necessarily meek towards men when His Father’s honor was at stake.

Desolation is never a right thing; wrong things happen actually because things are wrong really. One of the dangers of fanaticism is to accept disaster as God’s appointment, as part of His design. It is not God’s design, but His permissive will.

The greatest fear a Christian has is not a personal fear, but the fear that his hero won’t get through, that God will not be able to clear His character. 

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