Setting Up Inner Alarms

UV 1550/10000 Setting up Inner Alarms

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

Psalm 30 v 5

We are in a covenant relationship with the Lord. It is the grace of Jesus that we who are sinful and mortal are elevated to an equal footing with God who is infinite, holy and all powerful. A covenant relationship is one that endures like the most lasting of ties on earth-marriage. It endures the ups and downs in our fortunes, our emotions and other upheavals. Sometimes, we might even provoke the displeasure or anger of God. However, the anger of the Lord does not last forever. The moment we truly repent of that which caused His anger, it turns to favour or grace. His grace gives us the experience and joy of abundant and eternal life. He turns our sorrows into joy, our tears into laughter. He is the morning star or the Sun of Righteousness. When He is pleased with us and smiles on us, we receive healing and blessing from His Word that is like the rays of light from the morning sun.

The Psalmist surprisingly describes His loving kindness or grace better than life. It implies that we should desire to live a life pleasing to the Lord more than we desire life itself. We need to continually thank and praise the Lord for His goodness. We should be like the prism that splits the white light into the seven constituent colours: the seven colours stand for seven blessings of the covenant that are part of the saving grace of the Lord: His presence with us, salvation and deliverance, a double portion of blessings in our areas of need, prosperity, victory over foes and enemies, blessings on the family and anointing. Together, these seven blessings constitute Shalom or wholesome peace and prosperity.
The enemy of our soul is constantly conspiring to rob, kill, steal and destroy our peace and joy. He attempts to rob us of our seven fold blessings. He robs us of our mental peace, our physical health, our prosperity. He attempts to disturb our relationships with each other sowing seeds of dissension. But Jesus guarantees us as no one else can that the peace and joy that He gives us cannot be stolen, robbed, destroyed or taken away by anyone. Angels or ministering spirits are sent to us for our physical security while the Holy Spirit is sent to us to guard our inner peace and joy. Whenever something happens to take away our inner peace and joy, we should recognize that this is not from God. We should not wrongly attribute it to the anger of God but to the acts of the thief of peace, joy and well being. We should set up the equivalent of burglar alarms to wake us up whenever we are under attack. The alarm can be a wrong tone of voice, a negative word or attitude, a downswing of our mood, a tendency to withdraw into oneself, a sharp reaction to something someone said or did, prayerlessness and so on.
Prateep V Philip