August 4 – A King in Our Crisis (Psalm 74)

“You, O God, are my king from of old; you bring salvation upon the earth.” (Psalm 74:12)

IN WORD:
That’s what our crisis needs: a King. It needs Someone who will restore order, Someone who will tell us how to get back in sync with the Kingdom program, Someone who will know what went wrong and how to fix it. Every human life needs His touch.
There are two profound implications when we call God our King: (1) We acknowledge His ability to reign over our circumstances, making Him the object of our praise and the heart of our worship; and (2) we acknowledge His right to reign over us, submitting ourselves to His authority and removing ourselves from control of the situation. Both are necessary responses in crisis; the King will inhabit the ruins of a person who knows both His power and His authority.
An easy trap for us fallen creatures to get caught up in is the tendency to ask God for His control of every aspect of our situation except us. We want Him to control the people who are making us miserable, the circumstances that are causing us stress, and the threats to our well-being. But we are much more hesitant to offer Him complete authority over our lives. We want Him to fix things. We don’t want Him to fix us!
God will usually NOT work that way. In fact, He often allows our crises specifically to bring us to a point of willingness, where we cry out for Him and are willing to sacrifice anything — even our own self-will — for Him to intervene. He must break our self-direction if He is to direct us. For Him to take control, we must relinquish it. There is no other way.

IN DEED:
God brings salvation upon the earth — on His terms, not ours. We want to be saved from our situation, but God is much more loving than that. He must save us from ourselves — our plans, our false hopes, our determination to be self-fulfilled and hang on to our means to accomplish it. We are often not willing until crisis comes; then we’ll do anything to see God. It was grace that brought us there; it is grace that will now bring His salvation into our ruins.

“As Christ is the root by which a saint grows, so is He the rule by which a saint walks.” -Anonymous-