my eyes long for Your salvation and for the fulfillment of Your righteous promise. deal with Your servant according to Your steadfast love, and teach me your statutes. [psalm 119:123-124]
what in this world sets your “salvation meter” off? what brokenness, sin, or injustice leaves you feeling so defeated you start to doubt God’s sovereignty? what makes you wonder if it would be better if Jesus would just come back and end it all?
when your “salvation meter” goes off, the devil wants to use it to damage your trust in God. he wants you to think you’re better off ignoring the needs of others to hide from the fact our world is so broken. many of us are tempted to shape our whole worldview around ending that singular injustice.
Jesus calls, the devil blames
this isn’t to say that the Lord doesn’t use our unique “salvation meter” to call us to a unique mission! the incredible testimony of 2,000 years of christian martyrs give evidence that God gives believers a specific heart to lament over a specific people – a lamentation that leads to sacrificial service! but when your “salvation meter” leads not to service, it leads to blaming – to picking one injustice and seeing it as “the root of all evil.”
when we view God’s eventual salvation of the world through the lens of sinful flesh, we will always end up picking the “specks out of others’ eyes” while ignoring our own “logs”. scripture, however, sheds light in this dark world!
teach me your statutes
Lord, teach us to see the world through Your word! teach us not to let our flesh lead us to hate one sin or injustice over all others, but to let the Spirit guide us. no matter what sets out “salvation meter” off, show both our call to fight that injustice and that, while our calling may be specific, Yours is all-encompassing and is beyond our understanding.
~ stephen hall