Ultimate Security

Isaiah 52:12; “You shall not go out with haste,…for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.”

Security from Yesterday.  “…God requires an account of what is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15).  At the end of the year we may look forward with more eagerness than we look at some of our yesterdays.  Our present enjoyment of God’s grace tends to be lessened by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders.  Because God is the God of the past, if we give the sins and blunders of the past to him, he will use them to bring spiritual growth.

Security for Tomorrow.   The above verse says, “…the Lord will go before you…”  The Lord will send his forces out where we have failed to do so.  He will keep watch so that we will not be tripped up again by the same failures of the past.  He is our “rear guard.”  If we allow him to do so, God will reach back into our past and settle all the claims against our conscience.

Security for Today.  The verse above says, “You shall not go out with haste…”  As we begin a new year, make sure it is not in the haste of impetuous, forgetful delight, nor with the quickness of impulsive thoughtlessness.  Let’s move ahead with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us.  There are the lost opportunities of the past but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future.  Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.

Leave the broken, irreversible past in his hands, and step out into the invincible future with him. 

May you have a blessed and meaningful 2012!

(The above thoughts come from “My Utmost For His Highest” by Oswald Chambers, devotions for December 31, 2011.)      

   Blessings,

   Pastor Marvin