Mensa Otabil - God Will Keep You
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Welcome to day number 16 of our Fresh Start. We are winding down to the end, and already the year is picking up momentum. I trust that these meditations and times of prayer are helping us face the year that lies ahead of us.
Psalm 121, verses 5 and 6: The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. Every year, as we encounter all the unknowns, we must have the assurance of God’s protection. The Lord is our keeper, and that is a matter of faith, conviction, and commitment. It is based on knowing the nature of God, knowing who He is and how much we can trust Him for an endeavor or for something that we commit ourselves to. God is able to keep that which belongs to Him throughout the changing scenes of life. He remains the same; He’s our keeper, our protector.
Now, it’s good in life to have systems of protection. Of course, all of us like it when the police protect the citizens, or the armies defend a state, or an insurance company safeguards your assets and property. These are all important ways we secure the things that belong to us. However, by and large, the greatest assurance of safety we must have in this life is the keeping of the Lord. While we do all the things we must do naturally to protect what we must protect, we must not do it at the expense of our faith in God and His ability to keep us. The Lord is your keeper in 2023, and He will take you through safely.
The passage also says that the Lord is our shade, and it mentions that the sun shall not strike us by day, nor the moon by night. This speaks of the dangers of both day and night. The daytime has its own perils, things that can go wrong, while nighttime brings its own dangers, like thieves and robbers. Regardless, whether there is danger by day or danger by night, God is our shade. He is our protection, keeping us from the severity of what comes in the daytime and the night.
As we engage this year, we engage it from a place of faith and confidence in the Lord-confidence in His ability to provide shade for us. The psalmist lived in a world where shade from the sun during the day was critical. Anyone who has lived in that part of the world would know that in the heat of the day, you could get sunstroke. Your skin could be at risk, and through it all, God is our shade and our keeper.
As you go through this year, there may be challenges that hit hard all over the world-some may scare you, may terrify us-but the Lord is our shade, and the Lord is our keeper. We may hear of things in the dark, threats at night, things we cannot see-menacing threats in different places that put us in fear. But the Lord is your shade, and the moon shall not strike you or come against you. So, whether by day or by night, we go through the year with the full assurance that the Lord is our keeper and shade. He will take us through safely and bring us to the end of the year in the power of His Spirit.
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, You are my keeper and my shade. Cover me with Your presence throughout this year, in Jesus' name, amen and amen. Well, I’ll catch you again tomorrow. I’m Pastor Mensa Otabil. Shalom, peace, and life to you.