I’m
going to be honest here. I typically my life in conscious,
constant, habitual sin. It's not too often when I deliberately decide to use prayer and God's Word to defeat temptations. The other day, I watched a video by one of my favorite
YouTubers (kirbyisaboss) on putting shame to death, and while I was very
connected to the topic, I found myself empty by the end. Empty and
yearning for more. Because this girl had such a fire for Christ and mine
seemed to go in flares. I realized immediately that the reason my fire
for Christ was barely a glowing ember was because of my state of sin,
and the way I was embracing idolatry over Christ.
So, as I unzipped my Bible with thirst rather than obligation for the
first time in weeks, I prayed to God in a desperate, broken manner, for
my shame was crushing me. I wanted to learn and to dig and write about
my discoveries with a long-lasting flurry of passion for sharing Jesus. I flipped it
open, and sat back in shock and wonder.
I
don’t usually agree with the idea of opening your Bible to a random spot
and having it speak clearly to your situation, but Job 26:12 did
exactly that.
“He quieted the sea with His power, and by His understanding He shattered Rahab.”(NASB)
At first, I only read the first portion of this verse, and it didn’t
really click. The first portion was underlined and I had written a note
beside it that said: Matthew 8:26. Flipping there, I saw that it was the
story of Jesus calming the Sea of Galilee. This verse states:
“He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?’ Then
He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly
calm.”(NASB, all emphasis mine)
The first thing that came to my mind when I read this verse was God’s
beautiful deliverance. For weeks, my heart had been wrestling not only
with sin, but also with worry and a lot of fear. Because I allowed my
emotions to control my thoughts and eventually my actions, my faith
became weak. I stepped back into the hole of doubting God and His
promises and His plans for me. God doesn’t take excuses. When He asked
why his disciples were afraid, He didn’t need an answer, because they
had no reason to be frightened. After Jesus reminded them that their
lack of faith had lead to the illogical allusion of fear, He turned to
the source of the fear and rebuked it. God is a jealous God. He doesn’t
want other ‘things’ to take up His rightful place. When I was focusing
more on my fears than on my prayer life, I was allowing my choices based
on my fears to rip my attention off of Christ, much like Peter in the
storm.
Do you realize that fear is a sin?
God commands us not to fear in so many verses (Isaiah 35:4, Isaiah
41:10, Matthew 10:26, etc.). God wouldn’t command us to cease doing a
good thing. So in reading this verse, I saw the beauty in God’s
deliverance; I was reminded that God can take the source of my fear and
rebuke it, giving me perfect calm and peace in Christ alone.
But we’ve all been there: that week where nothing goes right no matter
how much you read your Bible, pray, and try to do the right thing. The
week when fear and anxiousness start to control your life with such a
stranglehold, and God seems to just sit back and watch. This is where we
need to realize that God can take away the fear, shame, anxiousness,
etc, but that doesn’t mean He will right away.
The second half of the verse is really what struck me:
“By His understanding He shattered Rahab.”(NASB)
I simply cannot choose a single portion of this half of the verse to
emphasis, because it is so good, so beautiful. I’m sure that not
everyone is having as much of a filling moment as I am, but its times
like these when I feel so alive; God is showing me so much, on a
personal, intimate level!
I have always
connected myself with Rahab; she was a harlot. She was a broken Gentile:
sinning, and causing others to sin. But God used her in a marvelous way
because she finally stepped out and put her faith and trust in Him. And
that’s what God has done for me. (Forgive me if I am taking this out of
context. MacArthur seems to have a different take on the verse. His
note will be at the end of the post for those of you more interested*.
This is just what I thought when I read this verse.)
By God’s understanding, He shattered Rahab. (Insert your name).
By God’s understanding, He shattered Jesslyn.
For me, I didn’t truly understand how immeasurable God’s grace, love,
mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and ultimate sacrifice was until I had
hit rock bottom. I didn’t cling to Him until it seemed like everything
else in my world was ripped to shreds and I was going down. I allowed my
stubbornness and pride to blind myself from Jesus. And God must have
known that in order for me to give myself fully over to Him, there had
to be nothing left for myself.
His
understanding of my pain, hurt, confusion, and anger put the reason
behind His action (not that God needs a reason to do anything; He is God
after all…).
“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we
do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but
One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without
sin.”(Hebrews 4:14-15, NASB)
He has been through everything we have ever been through, are going
through, and will go through. He completely understands, because of
that, how desperately many of us need to be broken down before built up
again. We create a foundation of lies that we trust to hold us up, but
when the earthquake comes, that block isn’t going to be stable.
Sometimes, God allows us to fall and skin our knees so that we realize
how much we need to rely on Him as kneepads.
Just the
fact that I opened my Bible to this particular verse blew me away. He knows what is going on in my life, and is intimately acquainted with all my ways. He knows and will give me the desires of
my heart. He sees the wear and tear that my sin has caused, and He’s
taking me from the middle of the battlefield to restore my armor before
sending me back out.
I have shame. I have
fears. But because of Christ’s blood atonement for my sins, they have no
logic to back them up, and they will not stand when face to face with
my Creator, my Savior, my High Priest, my Abba Father, who laid down His
life and rose again so I could be free.
*[“Rahab” seems to be widely used to describe things that wreak havoc.] –MacArthur Study Bible, notes on Job 25:12
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