It Is Good To Draw Near!!
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the Rock and firm Strength of my heart and my Portion forever. For behold, those who are far from You shall perish; You will destroy all who are false to You and like [spiritual] harlots depart from You. But it is good for me to draw near to God; I have put my trust in the Lord God and made Him my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.” (Psalms 73:26-28) - Amplified Bible.
Today as I opened the Word of God to the Book of Psalms, the Lord brought my attention to Psalms 73:26-28. As I began to read those verses, hope sprang up in my heart as I identified with the Psalmist David, when he expressed his heart to God, as He shared His inner most thoughts with the Lord. Here is a man, like us, who made a lot of mistakes, stumbled, tripped but was quick to repent and go to the Father, and then move on in his walk and relationship with the Lord.
As I look back, I remember how often, over the last three years, it seemed that my heart and my flesh failed me. I wondered how can I go on, how can I deal with the dark nights of the soul.
I would weep from my inner most being, wondering why God, why now, I am so alone, I don’t want to be alone but then the Spirit of the Lord would remind me, as He reminded David, that He, God is the rock, the sure foundation, the fortress that we are to dwell in.
That He is our firm foundation, our strength. Unshakable, unmovable, the anchor of our soul. That He is our portion, our inheritance in Christ forever and that there is nothing the enemy could do to change that as long as we abide in Him.
When we go after that which is not of the Lord, when we desert Him, divorce ourselves from Him and follow after that which is not of Him, that which takes us away from His presence, then we become spiritual harlots, selling ourselves for that which is temporal and will fade away.
As David said in verse 28, it is good to draw near to God. To come into an abiding relationship, into a place of being intimately aguainted with the Lord, to the Spirit, to His word, allowing Him to write it upon our hearts.
Molding and shaping us and conforming us to Himself so that we can walk this day, in this time, in the ways of the Lord. We are to put our trust in the Lord, in our Father. We are to make Him our refuge, our hiding place, our dwelling place.
He is bringing us to a place where it is no longer us, but Christ, that lives in us, yet we live, because He lives. Is that not awesome! I am me, you are you, but we are in Christ. It is hard to put into words, but I do know it is real, it works.
I have put my trust in the Lord. These last three years have brought me to a whole new relationship with the Lord and it has allowed me to share the wondrous works of the Lord. That after thirty-six years of knowing Christ as my saviour, the last three years I have come to know Him as Lord. Going from theory, to reality, learning to experience the presence of the Lord.
And now my desire is to reflect the reality of a life founded in a living Saviour. Sharing the hope that is within. That the fragrance, the presence of the Lord in my life, will draw others to want to know about the hope, the peace, the rest that is within. That even during the storms, the dark nights of the soul, the times of weeping, He is there.
It is good my friends to draw near to God, for when you draw near to Him, He will draw near to you and His plans are good plans and what He has begun in you, in me, He will finish.
Till later,
Paul