Lovingly Boxed In
Have you ever felt boxed in by God. Whichever way you turned, He seemed to be trying to keep you still and tell you something and you just weren’t getting it. You know He could just let you do your own thing (well sometimes He does, see Romans 1:24). But the fact that He cares enough to not let you do that- well wow, that means something.
Psalms 139: 5-6 New American Standard Bible says:
You have enclosed me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
When I was in elementary school, we played outside a lot in our neighborhood-kick the can, hide and seek in the hay fields, adventuring at the pond. We took nylon stockings, bent a wire hanger into a circle and caught bull frogs with the net we made. We then took an empty coffee can, a metal round cylinder with a plastic top, and put the bull frog in it to see how long it took it to pop the top off-it didn’t take long! (I feel like I need to put a “please don’t try this at home” warning here, because this was rather cruel, but we were just being kids!). I think sometimes when God allows us to get “boxed in”, like the bullfrog we try to pop that top off. We buck the situation, trying to find a way out, struggling with everything in us to get free. But sometimes, He wants us to just TRUST HIM, to rest, to listen.
I am sure that Job felt a bit boxed in by all the tragedy, loss, destruction, sickness that was all around him. Yet God’s hand was still UPON him. His friend Elihu spoke the truth to him in this situation, saying in Job 36:15 NASB:
He delivers the afflicted in their affliction. And opens their ear in time of oppression. Then indeed, He enticed you from the mouth of distress, instead of it, a broad place with no constraint; and that which was set on your table was full of fatness.
“Fatness” H1878 means “fatness, abundance, ashes of sacrifices.” Isn’t it just like God to want to turn our ashes into fatness, abundance? But we must YIELD to Him in our affliction, in our ashes, and then we will find ourselves at HIS TABLE being filled by HIS ABUNDANCE. And this verse says that He uses affliction and oppression to open our ears to Him. If you are going through a difficulty right now, can you take a moment to stop and be quiet before Him, to listen and to yield to Him? What is He trying to say to you? He really is FOR you. He is leading you to HIS TABLE to bring ABUNDANCE to you. Can you trust Him in your suffering?
That God would care to rearrange the circumstances of our lives in order to point us to Him, is just TOO WONDERFUL! That knowledge is TOO HIGH and we cannot even comprehend it! The God of the universe CARES for us! He doesn’t just let us wander around aimlessly. He is leading us. He is the GOOD SHEPHERD. Again, if we persist in refusing to follow Him, He does some times ‘give us over’ to the lusts in our own hearts (Romans 1:18-32), but even in that, His heart is always that none should perish and that all would come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
So when you are feeling ‘boxed in’, please realize that
HIS HAND IS UPON YOU.
In His Love,
Suzanne
Mom Morsels 