“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runs into it and they are safe” (Proverbs 18:10).
Well, it happened again, I went to my favorite online news source yesterday and read how inflation and rising prices are going to impact my life and the life of my family. To go along with that, a strategy conversation with the man who manages my retirement accounts, revealed that there is not much relief on the horizon for the woes in the financial sector of our nation.
So, I am being told that food prices and gas prices will continue to climb and that the value of my retirement accounts is going to continue to fall. Where does one go when that is the news coming our way each? The writer of Proverbs 18 exhorts us to run to the Lord, who is our strong tower.
In His Sermon on the Mount, (Matthew 6:25-34) Jesus talked about our physical needs and that God knows just what they are, down to that last penny and crumb and thread and gallon. He went onto say that the cure for such anxiety is, “Seek first the kingdom and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).
Every one of us has an “all these things” list. They are the necessities of life, food, clothing, shelter, transportation, etc. Though we all share that needs list, the numbers factor differs for each and every family. Psalm 139:3 assures us that God is “intimately acquainted with all of our ways.”
In a recent sermon in Alta, CA, I reminded the congregation that our lives are hidden with Christ in God and that there is no safer place to be (Colossians 3:3). And when anxiety about life begins to rise in our hearts and in our throats, Jesus, along with Paul, calls us to come to the Father’s throne. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your heart, and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).
I reminded that congregation that we’re not the first that have ever faced trial and tribulation. And the answer through the ages, for God’s people, has been, Come to Me, find that you indeed have a friend in Jesus. “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear, what a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer. O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.”
Peace in the trial, rest in the turmoil, that’s God’s promise. But we must come, come quickly and often to Him.