April 3rd, 2025
Written by: Kerri-Ann H.
“The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace.”
In Deuteronomy 29:5, the Lord
shares this very interesting fact about the Israelites’ journey through the
wilderness. He says, “For forty years I led you through the wilderness, yet
your clothes and sandals did not wear out,” and again in Deuteronomy 8:4 He
says, “For all these forty years your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet
didn’t blister or swell.” Then the Bible tells us in Daniel 3:27 that when the
Hebrew boys were taken out of the fiery furnace they had been thrown into for
the sake of their faith, “not a hair on their heads was singed, and their
clothing was not scorched. They didn’t even smell of smoke!”
Sometimes when we’ve read or
heard a story more than once, we are tempted to rush past the small details
because we’ve become accustomed to the plot and how everything plays out in the
end. However, whenever the Holy Spirit takes the time to highlight the finer details
in a story, it’s important for us to slow down and note its importance. Why
does God make mention of these particulars? For one thing, these two accounts
point us to the supernatural covering God places over His people as He walks
with them through adversity. They both demonstrate the uncommon grace He
releases, which produces within us uncommon strength and resilience to
withstand hard things.
By ourselves, we are weak, much
weaker than we’d like to admit. While some may dare to describe themselves as
strong, no matter how strong we may think we are, even on our strongest day, we
don’t have what it takes to withstand the storms of life on our own. The good
news is, God gives us an open invitation to look to Him and receive His strength
in times of weakness (1 Chronicles 16:11). And He takes responsibility for us
as we look to Him and trust in Him, because as Psalm 104:13 (NLT) says, “he
knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust.”
In fact, God takes such serious responsibility
for His people that throughout the Bible, He has made it a point to
differentiate between those who are His and those who aren’t. You may be
tempted to read the Abrahamic or Davidic covenant and wish it were you or your
family that the Lord had singled out that way. You may be tempted to think there
is no such promise over your life. But, friend, much to the contrary. The Bible
is replete with lifelong promises and generational guarantees specifically for
the believer, for the one who trusts God and looks only to Him for salvation.
And one such promise is His abiding presence. In Matthew 28:20, Jesus says to
His disciples, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the
age.” And in Isaiah 43:1-2 God says, “Do not be afraid, for I have
ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through
deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of
difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of
oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.”
As the recipients of salvation
and the “grafted in” of the Lord (Romans 11), we get to grab hold of this
promise of God to His chosen people. Through “deep waters,” “rivers of difficulty,”
“fires of oppression,” hardship of all kinds, pits and valleys, and everything
in between, the Lord has promised to not only be with us but to also personally
ensure we do not drown and we are not burnt up and we are not utterly consumed
by adversity. It is an assurance of protection, an assurance of survival, an
assurance of overcoming grace. And so
today, we like Paul can declare that, “We are hard pressed on every
side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but
not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).
It is He who reinforces your weak knees and overturns your seasons and breaks through your darkest days with the light of His presence. It is He who will continually equip you with a strength that is not your own so you can walk through fire without smelling like smoke. His only ask is that you look to Him and only Him.