Hello and welcome to In the Secret. A devotional podcast, and I am your host, Joni Scott
We are drawing near to the end of our study in Psalm 91.
If you have not yet memorized this poetic verse, full of God’s love and promises to His people, I encourage you to add that to your bucket list! I know you will glean so much as you consider these verses in memorization, and pull them out frequently for whatever you face in the future.
Now lets look at yet another fantastic promise in verse 15 “He shall call upon Me and I will answer him. :i will be with Him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honor him.”
So who is this verse talking about? God is talking to the one who, we know by the previous verse, has “Set his love upon God.” There in verse 14 God said “Because he hath set his love on me, therefore I will deliver him.” Now, in verse 15, this truth is reiterated! It’s a double whammy.
It makes me see God as a loving and powerful philanthropist, looking around and waiting to find someone He can bail out of trouble! He’s like Batman, in the bat cave, just waiting for the bat signal to glow in the sky so He can run and rescue them! God loves to rescue us!! He loves to be our hero! Not in a conceited and brazen way, but as the old fashioned lover who looks for every opportunity to throw His coat in the mud where she is about to step, open her doors, and take her arm up dangerous terrain.
Part one of this verse says “He will call upon Me.” So first of all, we have to put that Bat signal in the sky! Call upon the Lord. Ask Him! Talk to Him. Tell Him your frustrations and problems and needs. I cant tell you how many times I am thinking, “What am I going to do about, say, my car payment?” And I am mulling this over, and worrying, and thinking on it Then it occurs to me. “Ask God!”
When my children were younger I lost my car keys. That was a big deal because I only had one set at the time! Our weekly outing to a nearby town for the much awaited homeschool group was planned which made them frantically scour every nook and cranny in our three story home. We scoured and searched and complained. I would tell the family “Let’s pray!” And they would answer as they lifted a couch cushion for the fifth time, “I have been!”
Finally I called my gang of five over to the dining room and said “We are going to join hands and pray together.” The young ones obliged. We stilled our anxious minds and each child, in turn, prayed. Their sweet little voices made me smile. I opened my eyes in order to see those precious faces and upon doing so, noticed I was looking directly at my set of keys, one inch away from my face, atop our upright piano! I gently took them, so that when the kids opened thier eyes, there were the keys directly in front of them.
I have long remembered that incident, and a number of times it took stilling our heart and taking TIME to really look to God for the answer, before a problem was solved. Whether big or small.
But sometimes it may seem that Bat signal has been in the sky a long long time, and Gotham is being over run with bad guys!
The Bible is full of accounts of waiting.
Yep, I know, its a bad word we dont want to hear. Waiting.
Here where I live we have a blizzard going on outside as I type this! All the snow had finally melted and my annuals were cautiously peeking little stems above ground, when “Wham!” 20″ of snow. Now we have to wait for the sun to shine again and for it all to melt. Argh. It feels like forever. And we are waiting for our Corona Virus quarantine to pass by so we can go to church and Bible studies and weddings… And we dont know when this will take place! Again, it fels like forever.
Israel waited a couple thousand years for a promised Messiah. Meanwhile they were taken into captivity, where they had to await deliverance for, oh, a meager 400 years. Then God tells Moses “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of thier slave drivers and I am concerned about their suffering.”
If I was suffering as a slave in Egypt, I would hear that and think “but are you?” If you could do something about it with one mighty hand wave, why haven’t you?
The Psalmist David said in Psalm 37:25 “I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his descendants begging bread.”
I concur with this statement. I have often told people “I have lived long enough to know that when you keep hanging on to God through the thick and thin… He will come through. I picture Jesus waiting in the wings, ready to ride out on a great white stallion, charging forth in majestic colors coming to rescue me when I cry out for Him!
In the book of Matthew, chapter 15, we see Jesus waiting in thi way. A syrophenician woman, meaning a Canaanite woman, not of the seed of David, is following Jesus and his disciples around crying after Him. “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon possesed and suffering terribly!”
Jesus response? verse 23 says “Jesus did not answer a Word.”
Have you ever had that happen? Jesus is silent. You are banging on the door, asking, seeking, knocking, Bat signal shining. Nothing. Jesus is doing that here. He seems to be completely ignoring this womans pitiful cry!
Why? Well, Jesus knows her. He knows she is made of so much more.
And she knows Him. Because she refuses to leave Him alone! She is so pesky the disciples finally try to step in. “Tell her to go away. she’s bothering us with all her begging!”
Did Jesus rebuke His disciples for their callous hearts? Nope. He does the oddest of odd Jesus things. He says to the woman “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
What a blow. Such an insult. “I want sent to YOUR people. Only to my own.” Cant you just see the headlines the next day? All the Pharisees would be decrying Jesus as a racist!
Yet this woman will not give up. She kneels before Him, probably thankful He finally looked her way. She falls on her knees and crys out “Lord, help me!”
“It is not right to take the childrens bread and toss it to the dogs.” Now “dog” here should more appropriately be called a puppy. It s a little dog, a pet. You dont give your families food to the puppies, would you?”
What Jesus said was true, He came first to the Jewish nation. The Israelites were intended by God to be His special people who would IN TURN be a light to the nations. Gods salvation was never to be hoarded. Yet in rejecting Him, the door was opened for all to enter the Holy place. Gods word has always had a clause for foreigners and outsiders to play a role.
But in that instant, this women could have buckled under the rejection. Instead, she presses forward.
“Yes, it is,” She humbly agrees. Again, she knows Jesus. Because she has known my name… “Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters table.” I’ll take even the crumbs. Crumbs alone can heal my daughter. I dont need all the riches and all the glory and all the prizes. Just the crumbs, Lord.
“Woman, ” Jesus responds. “You have great faith! Your reqiest is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Could it be, God knows what you are made of? His relationship with you is such that He knows He can be silent, and even pull away from you a bit in order to actually draw you to Himself? Her face was such that she hung on despite others telling her to give up, to go away, to quit being a bother. Jesus knew her. She knew Him. And he showed the world was true faith was by her determination and perseverence.
Is your faith such that you will keep holding on when Jesus is silent?
Jesus brother James compares our waiting to a farmer. He says in James chapter 5: 7 “Be patient therefore brethren unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he recieve the early and latter rain.
“Be ye also patient, establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draws nigh.”
He WILL come. So hang on. Set your signal in the sky for Him and know He is coming as soon as the harvest in your heart is ready. He will charge out of the darkness on His glorious white steed and rescue you!
James also said “Behold, we count them happy which ENDURE.”
Not the spoiled one who gets their answer lickety split. But the ones willing to trust and wait in humble submission.
He’s coming for you! Hang on!
