“The Lord says, ‘I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name.'”
Anything that starts with “The Lord says…” is a big huge PAY ATTENTION sign for us. We know that the whole Bible is the word of God, but sometimes he wants to make sure we are really listening. So these words feel extra weighty to me as I read them: “I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name.” Glad he got our attention for that one!
My next question is this: how do I make sure I am loving God? How do I make sure I am trusting him so that I can be rescued and protected? These are fundamentally flawed questions, however, because they put all the power back on ourselves. We are the ones who need rescuing, remember? If I have to love God enough or trust God enough in order to be rescued then my own strength is my ticket to access to God. This is the opposite of the Gospel. If you want to love God, then you are loving God. If you go God’s way because you know your own way will get you no where, then you are trusting him. Remember Rahab who helped the spies? She wasn’t even one of God’s chosen people but she saw that she was going to get destroyed if she stuck with her own people and gods. (And for the record her spiritual entrance exam was lying really well, so go figure that one out…)
Here’s your freedom for today: there is no spiritual measuring stick. There, I said it. God is not measuring your performance every day and deciding what blessings to dole out based on how well you did. We need to reject this false gospel and instead cling to what is true: freedom is found the closer we are to Christ. We get hurt when we sin not because we aren’t measuring up, but because sin is inherently dangerous and harmful. You have absolutely no ability to measure up to anything, but you can imitate Jesus. Monkey-see, monkey-do. Simon Says. Children do this all the time. They do what they see their parents doing. That’s it. We just need to do what we see our Father doing every day and we’ll be just fine.