Standing before the Lord

Psalms 130: 3-4 If you O Lord should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

Psalms 91:1 He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide in the shadow of the almighty.

There are points in your life when God clearly spells out your sins to you by contrasting His scripture with your life in real time. This happened to me one day while sitting in a shanty in Honduras. We were going door to door and bumped into a beautiful woman with two small kids whose husband had split. She knew the Lord. When I asked her what her favorite scripture was she said, "Psalms 91, I read it over my family every night as we go to sleep". I picked up her Spanish bible and begin to read it, and we prayed over them and moved on to the next shanty. God was tugging at my heart to go back and read Psalms 91.

Later that day, I was able to read Psalms 91 and was struck with my pride. I honestly had to confess that I was not all that excited about dwelling in any one's shadow - even God's. Even in His grace, my pride had quietly raised up my own self independence. That is a really,really bad thing. I was in a spot that I am convinced that many of us who have been blessed by God get stuck in. A spot where we seek God to some extent, yet we are truly relying on our stuff and gifts on a daily basis and not Him. God showed me that my "self confidence" was a Huge barrier to a closer walk with Him and must be destroyed. He did bring that stronghold down as we worked through that prayerfully together.

Go back and read Psalms 91 and ask yourself how excited you are to dwell in God's shelter and shadow and I am not talking about when you die. I am talking about today! Read Psalms 130:3-4 and let that shape you. If you are honest many of you who are not in crisis, will be thinking "I really don't need a shelter I am doing alright". That is the hole that I was in and it is one of the scariest place to be.

Both of those Psalms, and all of scripture for that matter, should send us to our knees praising Christ. He is the only one who can stand before God as he marks iniquities as He was sinless. His sacrifice is our covering daily and eternally. We have a tendency to want to decouple those and "use" God when we need Him at death, yet spend our lives doing what we please. A Christ follower understands that He uses us to do His work doing what pleases Him. We will only be doing His work when we are walking in a healthy fear of the Lord,in a humble dependency on Him.

It is a good thing to be Following Christ. As God looks at Chad today He sees Christ and not my sins. It is a divine gift that I am able to dwell in the shelter that Christ provides!