When going through difficulties, it is hard to believe that God loves us.
However, here is the truth. If you read Psalm 136, you will notice the author continues to say, God did this and that because “....his love endures forever.”
Sometimes we think because we see the sun rising up every day, it’s automatic. We forget to thank God for providing sunshine and making the sun appear every day. I observed this when I witnessed a solar eclipse for the first time in my life. When I was right under the eclipse, it went dark for a moment. Nobody with me on that day needed to be reminded that in the absence of sunshine it was cold. We all stood in awe!
That alone tells me that if God wanted to make the sun go dark, he has the power to do so at any time. So the psalmist uses the rising up of the sun every day as a reminder that God’s love endures forever. If we think this is too grand, the psalmist again reminds us that even the food we have on our tables is a sign that his love for us endures forever.
If this still seems an abstract, we only need to switch on the TV for world news and we will realise there are people starving in other parts of the world, not because of their own fault. Similarly we have what we have by God’s grace. We did nothing to influence how, where and what colour we were born and there is nothing called luck but God’s grace.
There is nowhere we can run to when in trouble. Money can’t help us. People too can’t help us when we are going through really bad stuff. Who then can? Only God. So if only God, why not go all the way through and believe God?
It doesn’t matter how desperate we are, God loves us. Here is what David says after the Lord finally delivered him from Saul and all his enemies:
He reached down from heaven and rescued me; he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemies, from those who hated me and were too strong for me.
They attacked me at a moment when I was in distress, but the Lord supported me.
He led me to a place of safety; he rescued me because he delights in me.
Psalm 18:16-19 [NLT, author’s emphasis]
How could David dare say this, when we all know David committed adultery and was a warrior who killed people? If he could say this, you and I can also shout “God loves me. He will rescue me, because he is pleased with and delights in me!”
Our covenant in Christ is a better covenant than that David had in the Old Testament. So dare to believe that despite the bad things you have done and which you have repented, God delights in and will break through for you. God is not the person whispering “You are in trouble, your prayers are not being answered because God does not love you”.
It’s Satan, the deceiver, who caused Eve to hear what God did not say.
Today’s reading Psalm 136.
