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.”