Secure and Fruitful within our God ordained boundaries.
While I was walking yesterday I had a sense of the Lord’s power to keep us, ‘His Keeping Power’, in testing situations in our lives. It may seem at times as if we’re hanging on by our finger nails but God is able to ‘Keep us’ secure and to work more deeply in our lives when we need Him most.
In Jeremiah 32 & 33, both chapters begin with the prophet ‘confined’ in the courtyard of the guard, surrounded by soldiers. These two chapters reveal a whole series of prophetic words spoken from God to His prophet outlining the future of the Jewish nation. God was going to Banish them(Jer 32:5) but also Gather them(Jer 33:7). He was bringing Calamity on them but He would also bring Prosperity to them(Jer 32:42).
Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “I am the Lord, the GOD OF ALL MANKIND. Is anything too hard for me?” Jer 32:26, 27
Don’t make God too small, He’s over everything, all of mankind and all creation is in His Hand. We may struggle in our flesh with chafing circumstances but they can actually be the most productive, because God gets to do things His way while we’re unable to interfere.
Do we realise just how many chosen servants of God in the Bible went through tests and trials before coming to their destiny in God:
Joseph sold as a slave and then locked in a prison. Moses grounded as a shepherd in the ‘backside’ of the wilderness for forty years. David, the man called to be king, running for his life and living in a cave with three hundred outcasts. Paul who was in chains, but his Gospel message wasn’t.
In our age, John Bunyan, the Puritan, who wrote Pilgrim’s Progress while spending years in prison! Amy Carmichael who touched many lives, especially children, in India but spent her last years mainly confined(same as Jeremiah) to her bed.
In the natural people do everything they can to avoid and escape these types of situation, but God seeks to bring us to His outcome, His way. We seek for promotion, God requires us to yield and obey;
For you, O God, tested us; your refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance(Amen, yes Lord). Psalm 66:10, 11, 12
God has arranged/fixed specific trials for each of us but He is able to keep us in the trials – His Keeping Power is there for us today.
God bless and keep you in trials and testings.