It is easy to allow the way things look to throw us into a lethargic and almost depressed state of being. Trouble is all around us pressing in, it feels like there is no hope. BUT GOD is there and is not moved by how things look.  He is not moved by the plans of the enemy. God will destroy the plans of the wicked that are against us.

If God be for us, who can be against us? God is on our side. Maybe I should say we need to be on God’s side. Many times, people have been asked to choose who they are going to serve.

Elijah stood on Mt. Carmel and told the people they needed to choose. Then he gave them options.

I Kings 18:21 “And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.”

This is where the prophets of Baal tried to get their false god to send fire from heaven. They cried and cried from morning to night. Cutting themselves and trying to persuade their god to act. But nothing happened. Then Elijah prayed a simple prayer and the one true God answered with fire. He proved himself to be God. We say we believe in God, yet we put everything else first. He wants first place in our lives. Can we give him that spot?

Joshua 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Joshua stood boldly before the people. They were once again serving false gods of other people. These Israelites were born and grew up in the desert. They were survivors of the ones that God delivered at the Red Sea.  But the miracles their parents saw were just stories to them.  They were not personal to them. Still, they experienced enough to know that God is real.

I often would sit in judgment of the people in the Old Testament when it came to false gods. I would ask how they could bow to a statue and say it was god? Are we so different today? God revealed to me that we are no different as a whole people.  We bow to sports figures, actors, and singers, we worship our homes and material possessions. We worship the earth. We worship creation more than the creator.

God knows how flawed and weak we can be, he knows we are easily distracted. He also knows he has given us the power to be different and not be driven by our emotions and desires. But we have to learn that we have the power to choose. Life doesn’t control us. It may throw us for a loop every now and then, but we can control our reaction to what it tosses our way.

This is a lesson the children of Israel didn’t learn, and they had to wander the desert until they died. All because of their unbelief. Do we really want to spend our lives in a desert when we could be in the promised land? We are not meant to live in the stress and fear of this life.  We need to figure out how to see God for who He is, not the god of the box we put him in. We limit him with our words and preconceived notions of who He is. It is time to set aside the idea of who we think He is and get to know Him, really know Him.

He desires us to know him in an intimate way. He wants our worship and praise, not for what he does for us, but because He is the one true God. He sacrificed everything for us so that we could be free. We have no reason to fear or look to anything or anyone else. If God be for us, who can be against us.

Romans 8:31-32 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?  32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?