“Walk about Zion, and go around her;Count her towers;Consider her ramparts;Go through her palaces;That you may tell it to the next generation.For such is God,Our God forever and ever;He will guide us until death.” ~Psalm 48:12-14
I really loved what Tai had to say in her post about Psalm 84 and the highways to Zion. It was on my mind when I read the above passage. We have such a great blessing in the history that has gone before us.
Sometimes it can be easy to look back on the heroes of the Bible and think they had it easy, but can you imagine what it was like for Abram to hear from a God no one knew, and simply obey the call to leave everything he did know? Perhaps, even Abram fell back on the story of Noah. Noah’s son, Shem, was still alive when Abram left Ur, after all. It wasn’t a story; even if it was nearly a thousand years later, it was recent history to Abram. What about Noah? What did he have to fall back on when God told him to build an ark in order to survive a weather phenomenon that had never happened before? Well, Noah’s father was born before Adam died. Even the first people to put faith in God with radical results were not operating on blind faith. They faced great opposition, but they could see that putting their trust in God was trusting in a stronghold that has never yet been taken by the enemy.
We are very small people. God’s work will never be undone, but sometimes it is the easiest thing in the world for the enemy to convince us that we are not allowed into the stronghold of Zion. We have trusted the Lord this far, but we get to thinking that maybe next time our luck will run out, or that we will fail Him, and He will be right in leaving us in a situation for which we blame ourselves.
In times like these, I have found that my greatest comfort and encouragement comes from going about Zion, and counting her towers. Often, that means going into Scripture and reading of all of the faithful who have gone before me with the Lord. Hebrews eleven is wonderful on this point. Who was Abraham? Just a man who trusted enough to leave his home when God called. Who was Moses? Just a man who trusted enough to return to the nation that had wanted him dead, in order to bring over a million people out of slavery and into a desert with no food and hardly any water, all because God told him to do it. Who was Rahab? Just a woman who had heard of what the Lord God had done, and trusted the safety of her family to Him. None of these people are very shining examples of natural trust or skill. Don’t be afraid if you’re not either. Consider the ramparts. A castle is meant to hold the weak inside it.
“I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in [me] will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” ~Philippians 1:6
Our strongest faith comes when we believe that God is more real than our fears and circumstances, and that Zion is a stronghold that is greater than the weapons of the enemy.
We are just one small piece of the history of God’s faithfulness. We rely heavily on those who have gone before us, but there are also those who will see what God has done in our lives and find strength to trust in Him because of it. Count the towers to strengthen your faith, and to tell it to the next generation. Faith takes us out on limbs when God calls us to live in deserts with no water, and to receive our daily bread from ravens.
by Stephanie
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