Christian Living

GOD'S UNDERGROUND

by Luella Campbell
10/21/12
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GOD'S UNDERGROUND

"'When they drag you into their meeting places, or into police courts or before judges, don't worry about defending yourselves - what you'll say or how you'll say it. The right words will be there. The Holy Spirit will give you the right words when the time comes.''' Luke 12:11-12 (The Message).

No matter how good an earthly father we might have (or have had), he cannot always be with us when we need him. Daddy is supposed to be his children's protector but he is limited by his humanity. He has his own issues to contend with and fails us constantly because he is just like us and we are just like him, human, fallible and weak.

But the reality of our heavenly Father's presence cannot be overstressed. When Jesus promised His disciples (and that includes us if we are serious followers of Jesus), 'I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you,' (John 14:18), He was promising us that we have a Father who is unlike the very best of all earthly fathers.

The tragedy of many us who believe and follow Jesus, is that we have not fully grasped the significance of Jesus' promise. God is our Father and we are His sons and daughters. And the best of all is that Daddy will never leave us. It does not matter where, when or how we need Him, He is always with us, in fact even better; He is in us.

There is a word that does not exist in God's vocabulary - the word 'stress'. He has deleted it and replaced it with the word 'rest', and He promised that, when we live in His rest, He will fight our battles for us. He is available if we are ever put on trial for our faith in a court of law. However, for most of us that will not happen, but we are often on 'trial' in other situations where we need divine wisdom.

Jesus assures us, 'You don't need to think ahead. You have a divine 'Underground' who is with you and has gone before you, clearing the way and working on your behalf.' Isn't that an invitation to rest in God? This is non-negotiable. The Holy Spirit is in us; He is our advocate, answering through us, for us.

In this section of Luke's Gospel (Luke 12;1-12), having exposed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, Jesus tenderly instructs His disciples with the truth. What is He trying to get His disciples to understand? Unlike the Pharisees who believed that they had to work hard to keep God's attention and approval, Jesus was assuring His followers, 'God is your Father. He is a perfect Father. You don't have to perform to earn His love. He knows what it means to be a father.'

God places a far higher value in us than any of His other creation because He has invested His own life in us. He paid the ultimate price to redeem us from our self-inflicted slavery. He is determined to shape us into a perfect family of sons and daughters just like His Son and He's always with us, on the job, patiently completing what He started.

So He says, 'Will you trust me to do what I said I would do?' Trying to negotiate life's obstacles and issues on our own only delays the process. We might as well learn quickly that God can do a much better job guiding us through than we can. So, just trust Him. He is Jehovah Shammah - the God who is there!