Oh, how the Lord has been good to me these last three months...And I have so much to write it cannot be contained in this one post!
So, to start, yes, I have a job...but getting the job in itself is not what spurs my joy. After three months of job searching, I thought that the first day I went back to work would be one of the happiest, instead, it is one that arrived with caution and trepidation. How could I go back to all I had just relinquished? Wouldn't doing so lead me into the same trap?
But God is working still, as He always does in mysterious ways. Though the struggle for my job seems to be completed for now, every day He teaches me something new if I take the time to learn.
One of the most irritating things about my job is people who fail to return phone calls or emails. While you do end up getting used to it, there comes a point in everybody's life they want to know that what they have to say is worth hearing. That is especially true when it comes to God listening and answering.
A verse I read the other day seems fitting now:
In my anguish I cried to the LORD,
and he answered by setting me free.
The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid.
What can man do to me?(Psalm 118:5-6)
In Psalm 118, David is in deep pain. In anguish he "cried" to the Lord. In the Greek text of the manuscript, this word, qara, means to shout out in order to initiate contact, to believe that if you call someone will answer. David wholeheartedly believed that if he raised his call to the Lord that God was going to answer him.
And not only did he believe God would answer him, but his heart was swelling with joy over the fact that he would be free from his pain. When he says “[God] answered by setting me free” he uses the word Mehrab for free which means to swell with joy or boastfulness. He was ecstatic even in his time of deep pain that God, 1) would answer him, 2) would give him the hope he needed to go on.
God always answers us, even if we cannot hear. His joy transcends the barriers that mortal happiness often falls flat in. This is because His love is the backing of true joy, and because He still lives as powerfully as ever, nothing will ever supersede this love.
Scripture is full of references to this powerful assurance that God answers and delivers. In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul writes:
We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. 9Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us...[vs 8-11]
Three times, he writes of the Lord's deliverance. In Hebrew literature repeating something even once makes it emphatic; so to repeat his assurance of God's hope three times shows me Paul was not only confident of deliverance he was staking his life on it! After all, he had just felt the “sentence of death”, why shouldn't God come through?
It is this abundant hope I am striving to achieve, a child-like faith as Paul or David possessed. They had both witnessed God's grace and believed in the future of His Power. To trust the Lord wholly and completely as I did when I was unemployed is my greatest longing. And though I am not forced to turn to Him as I was before, how much greater my joy upon meeting Him than when I come with a willing heart?
Whatever you or I are dealing with today...no matter how small or large the issue, God is the only One we can count on returning our calls. And when we speak, He listens. Despite this wonderful assurance, it in itself is not the truest marvel though. To have the King speak when we are finally quiet enough to listen...that is the most unfathomable.
The King is on our side...We have nothing to fear! Like David I can truthfully say:
My Joy knows no bounds!
Rachel
