Peace In the Midst Of A Storm
The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. Zephaniah 3:17 ESV
This scripture has always been one of my favorite bible verses and today, it was the verse of the day on the You Version Bible App. When a familiar verse appears, I like to look it up and read it in the different versions and translations so that I never get calloused or take the passage for granted.
Usually, I read the daily verses in the NIV, but today it was in the English Standard Version. I noticed that the last two phrases were worded differently than what I had read before. “…he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”
I began to reflect over the last couple of weeks with hurricane Dorian. This storm seemed like it was the storm that would never end! The horrific hit from this category five storm to the Bahamas was devastating. As I watched the news and saw the pictures and videos that began to be posted, my heart was broken for those precious people.
“many of the Bahamians didn’t get the protection from the storm that they prayed for. If you are like me, this is when the questions began to bombard my mind and I began to wonder, “Can we really place our trust in God?””
With the changing forecasts and the uncertainty of how this storm was going to go up the Florida/Georgia coast, I became more and more anxious. And, my family can attest that I did not handle the waiting very well. My focus became so targeted in wanting to know what was going to happen with the storm that I took my eyes off the One that could speak to it and the storm immediately cease. Needless to say that there was lots of repenting that took place on my part due to my lack of faith and trust in God.
You see, it is wonderful to read about the miraculous healings, deliverances, the calming of the waves and the sea in the bible stories but when the storms are riveting in our own life, it is much more difficult to put our faith into action. I mean, after all, many of the Bahamians didn’t get the protection from the storm that they prayed for. If you are like me, this is when the questions began to bombard my mind and I began to wonder, “Can we really place our trust in God?”
It is alright to admit that we are human and sometimes our faith wavers. But if we are not careful, we won’t recognize that this is when the enemy will take advantage of our weakness and begin to speak doubt, lies, mistruths, and fear to us. So, we have two options - we can fall prey to the enemies’ tactics - responding negatively to the attack; or, we can use the Bible to root us, ground us, and to increase our faith to place our trust and hope in God.
This scripture has always been one to calm my troubled soul. And after the last couple of weeks, these two phrases mean so much more to me.
He will quiet you by his love. I am reminded of the many times that my children and grandchildren have been frightened. The first thing that they do is run to the arms of the ones that they know loves them with their whole hearts– the ones that can be trusted. We too must remember to run to the One that loves us. We can crawl up into His strong arms and let Him quiet us with His love because it is only the Father that can calm us and speak peace to our soul.
He will exult over you with loud singing. Truthfully, I thought this was a rather odd statement because Zephaniah was just talking about being quieted by his love and then he says God will sing loudly over us. I have always connected the Father’s joyful singing over us would be calm and quiet so why would God want to encourage us with loud singing?
I never got it until today. Stay with me. In my mind, I could see the picture of a little child, with fingers stuck in both of his ears, to block out all that he did not want to hear. You know, possibly saying loudly “la la la” to block out the noise. Then, I got it. I now see that when all we can hear are the lies, doubts, and fears that the enemy brings, it is then that God will sing loudly over us to block out every voice in our head but His own.
God never leaves us. When we are facing the storms of life, God wants us to hear His voice of love, strength, might, and peace above everything else. If we will place our hope and trust in God, He will always be present in our present to quiet us with His love and sing over us ever so loudly.
Jesus taught the disciples that their worth to God was more than the sparrows – and Jesus said that God does not forget the sparrow. Jesus then went on to say that God knows the number of hairs on each head.