More than a Conqueror
Romans 8:37
As I sit here my heart is being ripped from my chest and I find I have to remind myself to breathe. A friend just shared a photograph of an absolutely beautiful young family. Each one of them beaming with contentment and happiness, joy should be the caption underneath. Written instead are these words: Just a few of over 800 murdered: Tamar, Yonatan, and their children Shachar (6), Arbel (6), Omer (4), were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Nir Oz.
I am overcome. Spirit Move Me is running through my mind while these words from Romans play on repeat: Who shall separate us from the love of Messiah? Shall tribulation, distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For Your sake we are being put to death
all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.”
But in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Messiah Yeshua our Lord.
With our secular need to organize and categorize we have essentially legislated meaning out of the original text of God’s Word. We’ve done a horrible disservice to each other and the generations following, with these choices. The King James version never had punctuation because the word count and line breaks were culturally understood, and the original languages of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic are written in the opposite direction. So much would already be lost in translation. But to continue to divide personally written letters into segments palatable to us is daft unless you are purposefully trying to make it mean what you want it to mean.
These verses all go together. Much of the translation literally depends on context. His Word tells us that we put ourselves under His curse if we add or detract from it, but we insist we know better. In the balance lay countless lives. Some won’t get this, but some will. There are times when my life has literally hung by a thread from God’s Word; the pain so great that I find myself dangling in mid-air wondering if I can live to see the next breath.
As my enemy is screaming obscenities, I need to know that someone else can identify with my pain. I need to know that God has done for someone else what I need Him to do for me.
Who shall separate us from the love of Messiah? Shall tribulation, distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being put to death all day long;
we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.”
When I read these words, I know they get it. They’ve experienced my risen Jesus. They get me. Watching your world shatter before your eyes, wondering if you will live to see your children grow, or believing you have fallen too far from the love of Christ for Him to want to find you, requires that kind of confirmation. In His mercy He gives us that. I’ve faced death, not in the way this precious family or the disciples did, but I’ve felt it’s grip in my body, held another as they did the same and recognized its after taste on my soul. I have been huddled alone in a dark corner praying for Him to intervene on my behalf, with all the world confirming that I am unworthy.
It’s imperative I know that when I read that in all these things, I am more than a conqueror, through Him who loves ME, that I appreciate that these verses are referring to truth being revealed through pain. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, angels, principalities, things present, things to come, powers, height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate ME from the love of God that is in My Messiah Yeshua my Lord. I need to know that it is in and through these things that I am convinced and that it’s not a plaque-platitude. It is in the pain of life that He proves Himself faithful and true. In my weakness that He rises up in my defense.
Lord, today, let me stop whining, giving honor to my hardship, long enough to refocus my attention on You. I have great faith, however misplaced. Show me how to remain in you and invest my faith where it can best serve You.