Romans 8:31

When daily troubles flood my life
Remind me of Your deeds,
And show me Your sweet promises.
You are all I need.
When gales and winds blow through this world,
Teach me flexibility
So I can bend and may not break,
Because You are all I need.
When the tides seige the land
And the ground quivers at men’s sins;
When the sky is lit with fire,
Remind me of Your peace within.
When the blizzard of this callous heart
Inside me almost blows away
The hope that You once planted,
Let Your Son melt it away.
When this world surrounds me
And men and I fail to succeed,
Remind me of one constant:
You are all I need.
Nothing and no one can rift me
From Your mighty love
So much stronger than the fiercest foe
And gentle as a dove.
Whatever people throw at me,
It’s no more than I can bear
Because You grant me all I need.
Because, Lord, You are there.

Day 9

 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31).

I have a pretty cushy life, but even I find myself complaining about something. Something is always wrong. Not long ago, as a young mother of three, my battle was simply to get a decent amount of sleep at night and see my husband off in the morning, with enough time to read or write a little each day for this collection around my full day of, well, being a wife and mother. Many mornings, I do not have that chance. By the end of the day, I’m doing well if I have enough time to think between getting dinner put away and the dishes done and preparing for bed. That’s just one of my problems, and just about all my problems are “first world” problems.

The Israelites of the exodus were expert complainers. God provided all their needs in the desert, yet they always found something to complain about. Eventually, God punished them for their ungratefulness. I can hear Him exclaiming, “I’ll give you something to complain about!” And they shouldn’t have endured most of their circumstances if they’d just obeyed God in the first place! My son’s Bible storybook says that the journey to Canaan that took 40 years should have taken less than a week!¹

I believe God was trying to teach them to rely on Him and Him alone before He gave them what He promised. Ultimately, He still gave them what he prepared for them, but their failure to distinguish priorities kept them from getting there much sooner.

If you are at the very least going through an inconvenient time, maybe God wants you to trust Him fully in your circumstance. I hope it doesn’t take you 40 years to do that! Once we just let things go, I believe He is standing on the other side of the trial, waiting to clothe us again with refined treasures.

If you enjoyed this material, please leave a like or comment on my blog and you can purchase my book, Learning to Love: A Collection of Poetry and 40 Daily Devotions, on Amazon. Until next time, God bless.

1. This is not taking into account the fact that God had Israel remain at the foot of Mount Sinai until the second month of their second year in the wilderness (Num. 10:11). Nor does the Bible say how long it took for Him to lead them to the border of Canaan where Moses sent the first twelve spies to reconnoiter the land. Not until after the reaction to the bad report did God sentence Israel to wander for 40 years (Num. 14:33-34). This means that even if they were perfectly obedient in all things, they would have spent over a year in the wilderness according to God’s will. So to clear things up, it’s not like they were going to be crossing the Red Sea one week and the Jordan the next.