Afraid of the dark?

You just might be, even more so than you care to admit. This is truer in the lives of people of faith than we might realize. It may not be the monster under our beds or the scary animal hiding in our closets, but we sometimes are still vulnerable to paralysis and meltdown when crises, suffering, challenges and “darkness” threaten to consume us. You know the feeling, don’t you?

All of us manifest true feelings, and we all have true feelings about God. King David certainly did. The Psalms are all about them. Just read a few. Just because the Psalmist said it, it is not necessarily true that the Bible teaches it. Take notice; just because David wrote his true feelings about God, what he expressed wasn’t always necessarily “truth” about God. Our feelings sometimes lie. They respond on sometimes incomplete knowledge or incorrect information. We are well served when we rely upon what we believe to be true rather than what we feel, just as we are encouraged to “walk (live) by faith, not by sight.” (2 Cor. 5:7)

There’s an old saying that goes “Never forget in the darkness what you have learned in the light.” The application of this truth certainly involves prior study and investigation on our part, but it also demands that we decide what we believe before these crises occur and our minds and reason go fuzzy and we become overwhelmed. To that end, I want to refresh you and me with a few reassuring and reinforcing truths about our God, hoping that you will take them to heart and be fortified by them, knowing that He is always with us. (Matt. 28:20) It would benefit you to read these scriptures on your own and consider committing them to memory or put them in places where seeing them will refresh you, daresay “brainwash” you. (Read Deuteronomy 6:6-9)

Here are some practical truths about God that are worth holding near and dear, real, personal lifesavers we can count on:
God is good. (Mark 10:18) “No one is good but God alone.”
God is love, is loving and loves ME! (1 Jn. 4:8) “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
God is holy. he exemplifies perfect moral purity with no thought of sin or evil. (Rev. 15:4) “Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy.”
God is for me! (Rom. 8:31) “If (since) God is for us, who can be against us?”
God is always working for my good despite what the circumstances look like, so I can hang in there! (Rom. 8:28) “And we know that in ALL things God works for the good of those who love Him.” This does not say all things are good.
God is faithful, steady, trustworthy. (Deut. 7:9) “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God.” (1 Cor. 1:9) “God is faithful.”
God rules all creation with divine wisdom, power and perspective, despite our limited understanding. (Rom. 11:33) “Oh the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God.”
And he is in control of all things according to His will. (Col. 1:6) “All things were created by Him and for Him.”
God is unchanging. His character is consistent and can always be counted on. We need to take time to know Him and appreciate His character and attributes. (Heb. 13:8) “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”
Though God is Spirit and invisible to us and we can’t see him, he has revealed himself, his character, his qualities, his personality through the perfect representation of himself by the incarnation (human appearance) of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man. (John 14:9) “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
I pray these eternal words will become eternal truths for us, protecting, directing and reminding us just how great and personal our God really is. Think About It.