My Utmost for His Highest - May 19th - "Out of the Wreck I Rise"

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? - Romans 8:35

    God does not keep a man immune from trouble; He says--I will be with him in trouble. (Psalm 91:15)" It does not matter what actual troubles in the most extreme form get hold of a man's life, not one of them can separate him from his relationship to God. We are "More than conquerors in all these things. (Romans 8:37)" Paul is not talking of imaginary things, but of things that are desperately actual; and he says we are super-victors in the midst of them, not by our ingenuity, or by our courage, or by anything other than the fact that not one of them affects our relationship to God in Jesus Christ. Rightly or wrongly, we are where we are, exactly in the condition we are in. I am sorry for the Christian who has not something in his circumstances he wishes was not there.

    "Shall tribulation . . . ?" Tribulation is never a noble thing; but let tribulation be what it may--exhausting, galling, fatiguing, it is not able to separate us from the love of God. Never let cares or tribulations separate you from the fact that God loves you (Matthew 13:22).

    "Shall anguish. . .?"--can God's love hold when everything says that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?

    "Shall famine. . .?"--can we not only believe in the love of God but be more than conquerors, even while we are being starved?

    Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver and Paul is deluded, or some extraordinary thing happens to a man who holds on to the love of God when the odds are all against God's character. Logic is silenced in the face of every one of these things. Only one thing can account for it--the love of God in Christ Jesus. "Out of the wreck I rise" every time.

- From Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest" - Classic Edition

Highlights and Underlines are courtesy of Mom from her print edition.

My thoughts

Trouble - expect it. But it won't separate us from the love of God. Don't let those cares separate you from the love of God. They will try. God's love. Accept the trouble. Accept His love.