Isaiah 26:3
“You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast because he trusts in you.” NIV
As I sat quietly asking God what He wanted me to write on today a number of things came to me. After meditating on them, I realised they were all related to the same thing. God can keep us in perfect peace but we have to trust in Him. When we trust in Him, our minds remain secure and strong in our faith.
A few statements came to me.
The first is that we are all weak. We are at the mercy of events in our lives that are outside our control. We cannot control the weather, economic conditions, other people’s decisions, accidents, our health, and so on.
My question to myself and to you is “Have you accepted the weakness?”
I don’t know that I have. I have come to that conclusion because I so often race to react to things without stopping to ask God and wait for Him. There are times when people do things to me and I want to defend myself, but that is suggesting I have a power I do not have. Certainly, there are times when God will direct us to defend ourselves, but there are also times when He wants us to wait for Him.
I think sometimes the rush to interfere comes from the fact that it is hard to wait. It is one thing to accept I am weak, but can’t God just rush in and fix things? So often I have to wait. Just be. Pay attention to what is happening around me and to my commitment to trust God.
That is so hard. It is much easier to do than be.
In this world, true power is from God and that is the power that is under the control of love, without any self-seeking or self-interest. That is power from God. We cannot conjure it up when we want it, only wait for God to give it to us in His perfect time.
In this world there is a lot of temporal power used by people who play their little power games and politics. The gossips, the ones who spread malicious talk, the ones who control and manipulate. They are unpleasant and hard to just be when around them. But they will come to a bad end. God has promised that.
If you stop and think about it, it is obvious that people who rely on their own strength will fail, because true power lies in God. We may have to endure much at the hands of those people. And we may have to wait a long time, even beyond our lifetime, but those people will come to a bad end.
So keep your mind steadfast in God. Trust in Him. Never let go of His promises.
