Debbie shares her thought for the week; facing battles.
Bella is our rescue dog and every time you open the back door she runs down to the bottom of the garden to get to the back corner where she knows there is a very small Jack Russell living on the other side of the fence. She’ll growl at it, she’ll bark loudly because she feels that it’s her job to protect us from this dreadful monster. In fact, Bella feels like it’s her job to protect us all the time. This is probably down to her background and the fact that she’s got really serious problems with trust and a lot of fear. But it’s really challenging because no amount of training that we have tried so far has meant that she understands that she doesn’t need to do that. So it can be a little bit awkward at times.
And it kind of got me thinking about that. In two ways, we are going to face battles, difficulties and challenges in our lives and scary things. It might be our health, it might be our finances, it might be to do with relationships and those sorts of things. We’re going to face difficulties and sometimes we feel a bit like Bella that we have to go full battle mode and we have to get ourselves ready. But in the Bible, it tells us that God is with us in these battles and God says that we need to be still and we need to stand. In Ephesians, He talks to us about putting on the armour of God and He tells us how He prepares us for these things.
He says there will be difficulties, facing battles. But the most important thing is that God is with us and we have to trust God. Just like we’re desperate for Bella to trust us that the people that we let in our house are not terrible villains, we need to trust God. That God’s got his hand in that battle and that God will go with us in those difficulties. And that no matter what we face, we can be still and know that He is with us.
This got me thinking a little bit about God himself. One of my favourite names of God is Jehovah Shammah, which means “God is there”. God’s already there; He’s already been and seen the difficulties and the battles that we’re going to face. In fact, He’s equipped us with enough strength and enough to get us through these difficult times. He reassures us that he’s with us, He reassures us that this battle is not going to go on forever, and this challenge is not going to overtake us. Because He’s right there with us, in fact, He’s gone ahead of us. A bit like Bella goes ahead of us into the garden because she thinks that she’s going to look after us. Well, Bella can’t really, to be fair if that Jack Russell got in the garden, I think that wouldn’t be having too much of an issue there. But God does help us, God is going to be that person who takes us through those difficult times.
He says that whatever we go through, whatever difficulties we have, He’ll be with us. Whatever battles we face, He’ll be with us. I don’t know what you’re facing this week, I don’t know what this week has in store for you or what last week was like. But I do know that we have a God who we can trust, that we have a God who goes before us and fights those battles with us but also for us. Have a great week.
Every week one of our members shares a short thought aiming to inspire you for the week. You can watch previous Thought For The Week videos by clicking here.