{"id":5716,"date":"2014-08-22T00:05:22","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T07:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=5716"},"modified":"2014-08-21T23:27:57","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T06:27:57","slug":"trouble-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2014\/08\/22\/trouble-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you make the Most High your dwelling\u2014
\neven the LORD, who is my refuge\u2014
\nthen no harm will befall you,
\nno disaster will come near your tent.
\nFor he will command his angels concerning you
\nto guard you in all your ways;
\nthey will lift you up in their hands,
\nso that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
\nYou will tread upon the lion and the cobra;
\nyou will trample the great lion and the serpent.
\n\u201cBecause he loves me,\u201d says the LORD, \u201cI will rescue him;
\nI will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
\nHe will call upon me, and I will answer him;
\nI will be with him in trouble,
\nI will deliver him and honor him.
\nWith long life will I satisfy him
\nand show him my salvation.\u201d (Psalm 91:9-1)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If God loves me so much, then why does my life suck so badly? It is odd, really, that human beings imagine that love can\u2019t hurt. God says that \u201cI will rescue him.\u201d This implies a need for being rescued. If you need to be rescued, that means you\u2019re in a bad place, whether through your poor choices, or whether through circumstances beyond your control. God doesn\u2019t say, \u201cI\u2019ll never need to rescue you.\u201d God will not protect us from being uncomfortable, unhappy, lonely, disappointed, hungry, tired, short of cash, sick, or victimized. In the same breath that he says \u201cI will protect him\u201d he says \u201cI will be with him in trouble.\u201d <\/p>\n

When we marvel at how someone survives a disaster and comment how God protected them. But why didn\u2019t God keep that bad thing from happening in the first place? We are impressed how God preserved the lives of everyone in the plane that crashed in the Hudson River. But why did it crash in the first place? Wouldn\u2019t it have been easier to keep them all safe if the plane had just gone to its destination without incident?<\/p>\n

God promised no harm, and yet every day his people suffered death and destruction. How did that work? God promised long life, but he didn\u2019t promise we won\u2019t die. And death is not the worst thing that can happen to us, after all. Whatever we face, what God promises is simply that he will be there with us: nothing we face do we face alone, no matter how much it hurts. And someday the resurrection is coming. By \u201cno harm\u201d he means that whatever happens to us happens for a good reason, not a bad one, even if we don\u2019t\u2014and can\u2019t\u2014see it.<\/p>\n

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If you make the Most High your dwelling\u2014 even the LORD, who is my refuge\u2014 then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5716"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5718,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716\/revisions\/5718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}