Incredible Intervention

Most of us are clueless.

I know I am.

We live our lives, for the most part, oblivious to the real world we live in. By “real world,” I don’t mean the material world encountered by our five senses. I am talking about a reality far greater and of much more significance.

When Jesus prayed specifically for you and me in His high priestly prayer in John 17, He asked the Father that “they will all be one, just as You and I are one-as You are in Me, Father, and I am in You. And may they be in Us…” (John 17:21 NLT).

“May they be [as in exist, live, move about this world] in Us…”

Jesus prayed that our daily lives be lived in a conscious, thoughtful union with God through Jesus Christ by the Spirit.

Now, that is a reality of far greater consequence than anything I can think of in the material world!

Most of the time, and living at our best, we are able to recognize the results of living this way, but only after things have happened in our lives and we look back and see what the Lord was doing at the time.

That was King David’s experience. And he wrote Psalm 124 as a result…

“What if the Lord has not been on our side? Let all Israel repeat: What if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us? They would have swallowed us alive…the waters would have engulfed us…our help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”

Living like this is a recognition that, even when you can’t feel God’s presence and can’t see what He is doing…He is still working on your behalf, so that eventually you will be able to say looking back, with David,  “What if the Lord had not been on our side?”

But the truth for the Christian is that He IS on your side…and working on your behalf for yours and His good when you aren’t even aware of what He is doing!

I wonder if Psalm 124 came out of David’s experience in 1 Samuel 26?

Saul had 3000 of his best men, fully armed and out to kill David. During his pursuit of David, Saul and his soldiers camped for the night without realizing how close they were to David and his 400 men. For his own protection, Saul settled in for the night in the very center of his camp, surrounded by concentric circles of his best soldiers on guard.

David takes one of his best men and goes into Saul’s camp on an exploratory mission. Just the two of them amongst 3000, out to kill him. He quietly maneuvers himself to the very center of the camp and, rather than kill the sleeping King Saul,David opts to take Saul’s spear and water bottle as evidence that, given the clear opportunity to kill his adversary, David was not Saul’s enemy.

And David and Abishai got out and away from Saul’s camp without stirring a soul.

A daring mission indeed!

But how did David pull that, and likely many other feats, off, including the killing of Goliath?

In this instance, the answer is given us in 1 Samuel 26:12. “The Lord had put Saul’s men into a deep sleep.”

That is the explanation for the success of David’s daring mission.

Not David’s stealth.

Not David’s weapons.

Not David and Abishai’s footwear.

The Lord was working His plan and purposes for David’s life and the future of Israel in the spiritual, yet very practical reality of that moment!

“What if the Lord had not been on our side?”

I want to live my life in much more daily awareness of the union I have with Christ in the Father through the Spirit. And consciously live in the confidence that He is actively working in my life in all my circumstances, for my good, that I am conformed to His likeness, and that I advance His kingdom in the pieces of my world.

Even and especially when I can’t sense or feel what He is doing!