The heavens are Yours, the earth also is Yours; the world and all it contains, You have founded them.  Psalm 89:11

I spent most of the last two days driving.  It’s not something I do easily, but God was gracious in providing the needed strength and endurance.  Knowing that I would be traveling and my time would be limited, I was considering what I would write about this week.  As I drove, the song “I am Yours” started playing.  It echoed the quote from Charles Spurgeon that I shared earlier in the week and is shown at the top of this post.  The common theme was not lost on me.  Given the calamity due to hurricanes, earth quakes, threats of war, prayer requests, etc., it seemed appropriate to consider the concept that we belong to God and what that means.

Both Psalm 89:11 and Psalm 24:1 state very clearly that everything that exists belongs to God.  He created us and we are His.  The fact that it may irritate our independent and often self-centered spirits does not have any bearing on the truth of the statement.  Romans 9:19-21 and Isaiah 45:9-10 compare us to clay vessels inferring that we are like chattels to be used as seen fit by our owner.  Other passages refer to us as servants of God.  No matter how you look at it we are His.  Further, in an age when we seem to think that we deserve special consideration for enduring relatively minor, and even some major, inconveniences or stressors, that fact is that we do not.  The only thing that we deserve is eternal punishment.  In the grand scheme of things, we don’t have rights and privileges and we are certainly not independent.  Lest we think that anything we face is truly unreasonable, consider Daniel 4:35.  “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’”  That is the hard truth in a nutshell, but it’s not the whole picture.

“For God so loved the world…”  It is a loving God who owns us.  It is a loving God who directs the affairs of our lives.  It is a loving God that is sovereign over all of the personal and world affairs that will impact us.  It is a loving God who begs us to draw near to Him no matter what our circumstances may be.  It is a loving God who implores us to pour out our hearts before Him.  It is a loving God who says “I know the plans I have for you”.  It is a loving God that stays by our side and sustains us.  It is a loving God who has sacrificed His one and only Son to rescue us from what we truly deserve.  It is a loving God that has not only rescued us, but has made us heirs and prepares a place for us for eternity.  When we question God’s actions, wonder why He is silent, or worse, shake our fist at God in anger, we are forgetting that God is the definition of love and that everything He does is for our good.  Rather than questioning Him, worrying that He isn’t concerned enough or getting angry, we need to start looking for God at work in all of our situations…not just the circumstances that we find pleasing.  We need to also remember that it is a loving God that not only provides the joyous times in life but also asks us to participate in Christ’s suffering with good cause that may or may not be explained.  God is faithful…look for His love and trust it.

In an effort to move from intellectual to actual circumstances reflect on the following examples given to us in scripture.  Noah was tasked with building and ark to preserve man and beast during God’s judgement and endure ridicule in the process.  God asked Joseph to endure abusive treatment at the hands of his brothers and years of slavery and imprisonment to place Him in a high ranking position to preserve His family.  Daniel was taken into captivity and placed in a lion’s den to be a high level missionary and to allow God’s power to be demonstrated.  God patiently and lovingly put Jonah in the belly of a whale in order the allow him to adjust his thinking and complete the task God had assigned to him.   God honored Mary by asking her to risk everything to be mother of His only Son and watch as her Son hung on a cross dying so that we could be redeemed.  If that is not enough, consider people like Joni Eareckson Tada or Nick Vujicic who have endured much to be used of God for their unique ministries.  Better still; find your own list by looking through scripture and church history.  There are countless people who have endured much but trusted their faithful and loving Heavenly Father enough to serve Him loyally and provide a testimony to the rest of us of God’s love, power and wisdom.

Not only does God own us and love us, but He also protects us.  Psalm 121:7-8 reminds us that:  “The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever. ” God never promises to keep our bodies from all evil.  It is our souls…our spiritual lives the He relentlessly protects.  Barring the Lord’s return, we will all see death. Our deaths will be as unique as we are and precious to God.  However, our souls…our spiritual lives are the asset the God guards forever that we might enjoy eternity with Him.

It is our loving Heavenly Father that reached out in love while we were still sinners.  It is our loving Savior that died to purify us.  It is our loving Holy Spirit that consoles us and calls us to godliness.  It is a loving God that trusts us to be His ambassadors and do the work that planned for us.  We are better served to stop doubting and questioning and start accepting that God is loving and wise beyond what we can comprehend and ask for His direction in our lives so that we can be the effective servants that He created us to be in both the easy and difficult circumstances to which we are called.  As Reinhold Niebuhr put it, surrendering to God’s will allows us to be “reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.”   Yes we are His… we are His possession, but we are also loved as His children and that makes all of the difference.  Trust it and live it.  It may be difficult at times, but it will most definitely be worth the effort.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you.

Will