The Sunday News
Itai Chapunza
God is real no matter how things look.
Isaiah 8:17
“The Lord has hidden himself from his people, but I trust Him and place my hope in Him.”
The deepest level of worship is praising God in spite of pain, thanking God during trials, thanking Him in the middle of economic crisis, trusting Him when tempted, surrendering while suffering and loving Him when He seems distant. There is no greater level of worship.
When God seems distant, you may feel that He is angry with you or disciplining you for some sin. It is a fact that sin disconnects us from intimate fellowship with Him. Because of disobedience, conflict with other people, Christian or not, busyness, friendship with the world, and other sins as small as they may appear to you and I, these distance us from God. All it takes is you asking for forgiveness and you know you and God are good. After all He says in His word that He is slow to anger. Very often this feeling of abandonment or estrangement from God has nothing do with sin. You can be perfectly right with Him yet steel feel this way. It is a test of faith — one we all must face, scary as it may sound.
The question is will you continue to love, trust, obey and worship God, even when you have no sense of His presence or visible evidence of His work in your life? It is not an easy thing to ask of any Christian. Very often when He feels distant, all these options become available to you, yet all these options will only dent your relationship with God.
The solution is to focus on who God is. Regardless of circumstances and how you feel, hang on to God’s unchanging character. Don’t forget that He says, He is the same today, tomorrow and forever more. Remind yourself what you know to be eternally true about God. These reminders will assure you that you are not lost in the huge puzzle of the world and God cannot find you, but you know He is always there for you. He is a good father, He is a provider, He loves you, He is forever with you.
Hebrews 13:5
Don’t be obsessed with getting more material things, be relaxed with what you have. Since God assures us, I will never let you down, never walk off and leave you.
God is far above our reality in the sense that what is impossible or hard to us, to God is a very simple thing. There is nothing impossible with God. He understands it better than we do. He knows what you go through, He sees what is happening around you while you don’t see it. God knows your real friends and those taking you for a ride. Never forget, He says, He doesn’t sleep no slumber watching over you.
God never gets tired, He is never fed up. He never needs a breather from us. When Job’s life fell apart and God was silent Job still found things to praise God for. The only options left for Job were ungodly ones and those that would ruin the relationship with God. His wife even said to him “curse God and die”.
His own wife thought of Job as better dead. Job says to himself God has a plan for his life, He will save him, He is all powerful. When incouraging himself failed through to those around him, he began to tell them how much he trusted in what God was doing.
When his friends came to see Job, they too had many words to speak to him, but Job’s trust in God did not change. He remained rooted in what he knew about God. That the Lord is all know, and all powerful. So He knows how to save you and is not short of power to do so. If it worked for Job, who went through worse than you have, isn’t it a good idea for you to try that in your life while you wait on him?
I love what Raymond Edman says: “Never doubt in the dark what God told you in light.”
Remember His word to you as you go through times of test.
Psalms 1:1-3
How well go must like you, you do not hang out in the sin salon, you don’t slink along dead end road, you don’t go to smart mouth collage instead you thrill to God’s word, you chew on scripture day and night, you are a tree replanted in Eden bearing fresh fruit every month, never dropping a leaf, ever blossoming.
As a nation we are not functioning at our best and many people are under enormous pressure just to stay afloat. Everything goes up, apart from income, it is becoming harder and harder to encourage people to do anything positive since crime pay better. The youth are becoming less and less interested in going to school because uneducated thieves are making more. The wall of trails pushing against the masses of my home country is almost too high to comprehend for someone outside Zimbabwe.
For us Christians it is easy to manage such pressure because we know our God is faithful, we know what He has said to us in His word and we understand that time will tell that Jesus is Lord. Above all surrender everything unto Him, genuine surrender says “Father, if this problem, pain, sickness or circumstance is needed to fulfil your purpose and glory in my life, let it be”. Continue to think, work, function, progress because it is who God has made you to be.
Facebook — Itai Chapunza
Twitter — @itaichapunza
