God With Us

One hot summer night a few months ago my husband couldn’t sleep. Awakened at 3:00am, his mind drifted. Though triple digit heat lingered long in our central California city, our own lives seemed to be tucked inside a season of prolonged winter. As I neared the final stretch of a two-year graduate program and our family navigated some trying situations, we experienced growing excitement about the next season; looking forward to the new life of spring. We all seemed to be leaning toward the horizon, watching eagerly for the dawn of a new day’s light. Embedded in the dark of a long night, we felt truly eager to know, hear and see God in a new way. And that night my husband did.

Awakened out of sleep, several scriptures started running their way through his groggy mind. As he looked each one up, two words repeatedly jumped off the page. God engraved those two words on his mind and tasked him with writing them on our hearts and in our home.

The next morning he shared with me the two simple words God had deeply implanted within him:

With Us.

So brief. So simple. But they shook us up in beautifully unexpected ways, and they still do.

God was promising that He is With Us. Now and in the future, God is overwhelmingly…

With Us.

At the time this occurred, I was in the middle of an Old Testament Theology class and busy studying the language God used when planting His covenantal promises in the biblical patriarchs’ lives. This idea of “with us” was more than familiar. It was key.

“Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all this lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands and through your offspring allocations on earth will be blessed” (Genesis 26: 3-4, NIV).

The progressive revelation of God’s promise to be with His called-and-chosen people unfolded throughout his interactions with those He covenanted with. For each patriarch who received His covenant, God promised to be “with”. To Abraham, He called to leave behind his father’s household and begin a journey of clinging tightly to a God who would be with him.

“Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. ‘I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:1-3).

God being with someone carries favor, blessing, purpose. So profound. So humbling. God repeatedly reminded Abraham, and His descendants after him, He would be with them. Later in the Exodus account, we learn that God remembered /zakar/ His covenant, “God heard their groaning and he remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them” (Exodus 2:24-25).

“The word /zakar/ does not mean a sudden recollection after a period of amnesia. It denotes thoughtful consideration of something one has deliberately called to mind with a view to taking action on it” (Christopher Wright in The Mission of God).

God was intimately with them in their captivity, and He was intimately with them in their deliverance through the Red Sea.

God does not withdraw.

The introduction of the entire Exodus account, in which God demonstrated the saving character, power, kindness and strength involved in being with His people, begins with God intimately knowing what they were experiencing and remembering His own promises to them.

You see, God is thoughtfully considering the promises He’s given to you and I as well, recalling them with a view toward “taking action.”

He remembers. He knows. He sees. And He has not forgotten!

God does not have amnesia.

And even when it feels like He has, God has not gone away.

He is…

With You.

As 2019 begins, I have a sneaking suspicion He is recalling His promises to you with a view toward “taking action.”

And I’ll tell you what we are holding onto this year.

The key to all the promises of God rests in those two little words God whispered to my husband that night at 3:00am.

With Us.

“I will be with you” God told Moses as He sent him into Egypt to live out an impossible but glorious story (Exodus 3:12).

When God is with you, it opens your life to something great. God promises to be with those He covenants with and with those He calls.

God being with us means everything.

As the covenant with Abraham was renewed and expanded for the nation of Israel at Mt. Sinai, God reminded His people,

“I carried you on wings of eagles and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession… you will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:4-6a).

The key to God’s promises being fulfilled in their lives and ours is God’s presence being with us. It is His presence that unlocks His power. It is His presence that unlocks His promises. It is His presence that is the key to living as a people of covenant, a People of Promise. As a royal priesthood, God’s people are called to carry the presence of God upon their lives, and then to carry it out into their world.

God being with us is a promise (the greatest promise of all) and a reminder, that the God who sees and knows you fully and who acts to save, heal and deliver, has not forgotten you nor His promises. He thoughtfully remembers all the promises He has given. They are more precious to Him than they are even to us.

And His presence with us is His guarantee.

My family expects to remember and experience God with us this year like never before. We have no idea what 2019 will hold but we feel as though we are embarking on some kind of a new road, off the beaten path, on some dangerous and exciting adventure.

We recognize we have never been this way before.

But what we are certain of is that…

God is With Us.

If that is all we have; if all we have is God With Us, is that enough? I think we are about to find out.

We don’t know what it will look like or how it will end, but if you’re interested you are welcome to watch. However our stories unfold in learning to live “God With Us”  lives this year, I plan to record bits and pieces here (thesacredstory.com), through my social media accounts, and under the hashtags:

#peopleofpromise #thesacredstory

So, here we go 2019.

We declare you to be a year of God With Us.

What would a year of living God With Us kind of lives look like for you?