If you’re anything like me (or anyone else with a pulse), you are likely feeling anxious about this election. I have a suspicion the whole, entire world is a little anxious about how tomorrow is going to turn out for America.
I have been doing a lot of book editing, over the past few months. It’s holy work, but it’s easy to read my own writings through an analytical, editorial lens, rather than as someone who needs shaped by the words… and the objective it to write a book that will transform lives. So, why not start with my own?
This morning I was reading a chapter on spiritual poverty… About how God is so lavish with His affection towards us that He uses our neediness to draw us to Himself, rather than pushing us away, like we tend to do with others, when they are needy and broken.
Hebrews 4:16 provokes us to “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” God uses our desperate need for mercy and grace as an invitation.
Right now, as a nation, we are desperate for mercy and grace. If you are God’s child, you can walk confidently into His presence, crawl up on His lap, begging and resting.
In Psalm 131, David compares his relationship with God to a weaned child resting on his mother’s lap. How glorious is that? Weaned children come for relationship, rather than to have any needs met.
So there you have it. That’s how I am being transformed. All of this anxiety over the state of the world, and the future of our country, have sent me clamoring right into the lap of God. It is enriching my relationship with Him, because my distractedness and disgruntledness is not something I am willing to let reside in my heart, so I run to the Healer to heal me, and in doing so, the intimacy of our friendship grows. Because of the cross, and the purification it completely accomplished in me, I can run to Him confidently, and know full well that I will be met with grace and affection!
I don’t know how tomorrow’s going to turn out. The future of our country and our world will be intensely affected by it, but one thing that will not be affected is the fact that God is a grace-and-mercy-dispensing God, with a limitless amount of affection for His’ people! So, no matter what happens in the temporal, I can have joy and peace, because my God is triumphantly good, and He will use both hardship and blessing to draw me nearer… and “the nearness of God is my good”. (Psalm 73:28)
Space Welch- Election Eve 2020
