3-11-2018

Good Morning All,

         2 Samuel 22: 17-18“He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters.  He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me.”

    I remember watching a movie many years ago in which the story starts with a young boy who was out fishing with his father.  It was a cold day and the boy moved in the boat and fell into the water.  The scene was very surreal; the boy slowly was sinking in the cold water.  There was no sound; just him sinking.  Suddenly a hand grabbed his coat collar and yanked him back up.  As he was pulled out of the water, you heard yelling and screaming and the little boy was coughing and crying and the boat was hurrying back to shore to get him into dry clothes and warm him back up.  The boy was scared; the father was shook.  The father never took the boy fishing again.  Yet the boy grew up to become a soldier who feared nothing.  The battle he fought was fear and he fought it head on.  

    In many ways this is what God does for us, he reaches down and takes hold of you and rescues you from your enemy –sin, the devil and death.  But God doesn’t just pull you out and then leave you.  When God takes hold of you, he holds on tight.  One way to think of it is that when God takes hold of you in what you could call a hug.  God takes you and hugs you close to himself.

     There are really three ways to respond to a hug.  First you can fight it and try to break away from it and run.  There are many in the world that do this to God’s hug.  They fight it; their sinful pride tells them they don’t need God’s love and care, his hug so they fight it and end up lost and often in struggles which they never win with problems that never go away.

    The second way to respond to a hug is to just stand there.  Let the person hold you but try not to respond to it.  Unfortunately there are many Christians who respond to God’s hug in this fashion.  They wear their faith like their Sunday clothes, for an hour a week after that their faith; like their Sunday clothes, hang in the closet.  They miss the robust value of God’s relationship with them.  They battle life by themselves and often face tough roads all alone.

    The third way to respond to God’s hug is to hug back with all the gusto you have.  Cling tightly to God; this is what faith is it is clinging tightly to God.  As you cling tightly, you can experience his comfort, his strength, his guidance but above all you can experience the true peace which God promises us.  We experience this true peace when we fully embrace God and his promise; when we hug God back. 

    God gives us the ability and the choice to pick which way we will respond to his hug.  Let God strengthen you to hug him back!

Dearest Father, all that we have is from you; give me the power to hug you back to embrace your love with all that is within me.  Lead me closer to you, in Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret