Malcolm Potts April 3rd 2016 ~ Assured, present, consistent

We read Psalm 116 in prayers this morning.  It's a really good Psalm if you are feeling rubbish and are pretty much convinced there is no God and if there is, He doesn't care much for you.It's good because the writer is really miserable -you know, crucifixion-sized miserable.  He's tangled  in a spiders' web and each strand of the web whispers ‘death, death’ to him. What a picture.He is dangled over his grave, suspended by these cords of death.  What a picture.He is heaving up his heart he is so distressed and grief-stricken and all this has come from nowhere. - like being hit in the back of the head by a brick.  What a picture.Then the definitive cry, "Everyone is a liar."The bible is so cool.  Think of the worst situation you can and it's in the bible.  God isn't scared of my ‘worst’.It reminds me of the cake our Clare was making the other day.  She made a chocolate cake and then poured a white cake batter on top."Take this skewer and wave it through the uncooked batter," she said."Why?" I asked."That's how you make a marble cake, Dad," she said.Psalm 116 marbles together a God who is so good with a life that is so bad.Horror, horror, horror. BUT God. . .!In Psalm 116 God doesn't fix it. He is there in it, amongst it, unfazed by it.  He is strong, assured, present, consistent.  He guards your life for eternity, he calls you his own, he will not leave you or forsake you. [You can be confident of that: Jesus was forsaken by his Father so we would never have to be.] He is in the business of salvation.  It's lost, dying, desperate things that need salvation and resurrection and these are God's core business.I was listening to a friend recently.  By the end of the story I was just confused.  So many circumstances, twists and turns, trying to sort things out, people who had been disappointing, expectations unfulfilled.At the end, I said, I am going to ask God, the wonderful counsellor, to do his work because I have got nothing to say!  We agreed to catch up once a week for a while to ask God to be the other half of the marble cake,  to be God in the midst of the horror.What we really need is to hear just a whisper of God's voice.  What God needs is just enough attention from us to speak and be heard.If that's you, start with Psalm 116 and Larry Crabb's book will be useful as well.BlessingsMalcolm