2018 Weekly Devotional - Week 41
Proverbs 30:5
“Every word of God proves true; He is a shield to those who take refuge in him.”
When I was a boy my dad rented a bulldozer to clear a bunch of mesquite trees out of the pasture. Dad used a root plow on the back of the dozer to pull up the stumps and when he did it created a crater that was big enough for my brother and I to play in. Now the soil in our part of the world has a lot of clay in it which means that it holds together and produces pumpkin sized dirt clods. We thought the newly cleared land looked like it would be conducive to warfare so we set about building forts. We stockpiled small clots that would serve as grenades and arranged the larger ones to create a semi-circular rampart. We strapped on our safety googles, loaded up the Daisy BB guns and took up our positions. Now my brother was two years older than I and had a better arm. I was no match for his grenade skills and my BB gun was useless against his fortress. No matter how many times I moved from fortress to fortress I could not seem to gain the advantage. If I stayed in one place to long his artillery skills shelled me mercilessly. If I tried to move to another fort his sniper skills with the Daisy raised whelps. Desperate times call for desperate measures so there was only one thing left to do; full frontal assault. That’s right, an all-out assault on his defensive position. I knew the fighting would be fierce. I knew that small ordinance would not prevail. I gathered up my courage and the mother of all dirt clods and began my attack. Let’s just say that my cut-off jeans were less than ideal when it came to appropriate battle attire. My legs suffered numerous injuries from my brother’s lever action Daisy. With searing pain in my legs and verbal taunting ringing in my ears, I was forced to abandon my assault and retreated to my fort. Discretion being the better part of valor, I proposed an armistice, which probably meant it was lunch time.
We are told in our Bible passage that every word of God proves true. How do we know? We must be put in a position to test it! If we never apply God’s word to our circumstances it is merely theory or conjecture. When we listen to the word of God and apply it diligently, not only is it true, it is also a protection. The Lord himself is a shield of protection to those who take refuge in him. The great warrior-king, David, knew experientially that God was a shield around him (Psalm 3:3). Over and over again David would run to God in his flight from Saul. So often we manufacture dirt clod fortresses of our own design hoping that it will be an effective defense against the Devil. We stop listening to the word of the Lord and listen to our own words of wisdom. Often, our wisdom is about as effective as my defenses were with my brother and our wisdom about as wise as my frontal assault. God’s word will prove true! Take refuge in him and let him be a shield for you.
In Christ,
John