Desiring Steadfast Love

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
– Psalms 51:12,13

More important to God is “mercy” (in the Hebrew, “hesed”) meaning steadfast love. This mercy leads us to have compassion for sinners as Jesus did…For, he desires love, not sacrifice, not religious observance (Hosea 6:6 & Matthew 9:13). This is the way taught to sinners, while we were dead in sin, caught in adultery, within the very throes of murder…Christ died for us.

I am realizing my natural proclivity is not found in a generous state. Yet, this is a way of life that I would desire to have. I want to be the grandpa who loves to spoil (reasonably) his grandchildren. I want to be kind. I want to be a joyful person. But these characteristics seem far from me. Perhaps these riches are found in a breaking of the heart. What God desires is a broken and contrite heart (Psalms 51:17)…He desires a humble heart of genuine love.

North Shore Adventure in Solitude 1/26/13

Well Lord, here I am, ready to hear your voice. Would you unblock my deaf ears…open my heart to hear you fully and not in part. I ask for great discernment and understanding; I ask that I may know where to step forward from this place.

“Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of The Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
– Exodus 14:13-14

The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war; The Lord is his name.
– Exodus 15:2-3

You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.
– Exodus 15:13

This is The Lord God; in his strength he causes war against those opposed to his redeemed, yet also in his strength he guides a nation to safety.
When reading this evening I came across the passage, “which he will work for you today,” in which my dyslexia translated as: ‘which (we) will work for you today’…now this would have made sense for me…after all, Moses was speaking to the people…it was Moses raising his staff. I would have gone on reading thinking that this verse revealed some great partnership with God.
However…
I have been given a kind of “spider sense” when my brain is playing tricks on me. By rereading the passage a couple times over, the true words would reveal themselves to me. It is “He” not (we). This point is further driven home when God says, “you have only to be silent.” There is nothing that this people can do to save their skin but to obey the words of the Lord…to move forward…to stay silent.

So how does this apply to me? I am no longer a slave to sin…and I know my God fights for me. This day when speaking with The Lord, I felt strongly the words “season of healing” and the inner response, or rather question within asking,’how to walk forward from here?’

To conclude this time of solitude I will choose to remain silent. No need to speak. No urgency to let my voice be heard…I will forward in silence before my God and his will shall be made known.

Fathe help me to embrace a life of silence before you…in its appropriate season. Would you guide me in your strength, be present with me in this walk of healing. I trust your goodness even in the darkness, may your light lead the way. Contend for me great man of war!
Amen