Christian Law Enforcement Fellowship Newsletter

February 2012

“To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in You I trust, do not let me be ashamed; do not let my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none or those who wait for You will be ashamed…” (v.1)

The 25th Psalm is my covenantal companion. The 23rd, often recited by most, is a treasured reminder of Who really goes before us, Who watches over us and guides us through even the most desperate times we encounter. It always brings comfort. Yet the 25th gets into the detail of my everyday life, the issues and influx of challenging circumstances which have a way of staring me down and causing “my little spark of courage” to flicker and die. Yet God’s perspective is infinite, as is His power and wisdom, and where Ps. 23 reminds me of His presence, the 25th is my Lord calling me out by name, turning me to His Face, and giving me the assurance of His promises so I can go on. God endeavors to be extremely personal with us and strives to enable us to stand up and access the resources He provides to overcome our greatest enemy, our own fear-filled heart.

Scripture states that the heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked and beyond knowing (Jer.17:9). It naturally generates perplexities and uncertainty because of the inherent weakness of our character. We forever shoot ourselves in the foot by advancing (or retreating) with misplaced purpose and forgotten identity. When flesh is our strength, it fails us at the most crucial time and in our panic stricken state blinds us as to why. Overwhelming anxiety stares us down and all we see is our debilitating inadequacy. Reason evades and reckless, irrational reaction causes us to run from the specter of every failure we’ve ever known instead of standing strong in heavenly armor.

But I am reminded in Ps.25 that if I’m trusting in God instead of myself, He is for me, and not against. God searches out our heart and tests our mind, and to those yielded to His instruction, rewires our thinking to know His Ways, and by His living Word builds a capacitor in us to be led and taught by the holiness and righteousness of Truth. To know His Way, the confidence of His Spirit, the compassion of His promises and the healing of His grace wipes away the sins of my youth so that I am neither haunted nor harried by them. God would not define us by our past but by the righteousness of His grace, and therein preserves us by the faithful, transforming infusion of His integrity and uprightness, guarding our hearts against sin.

Confusion and compromise do not have to be the way we roll. The enemy within is my worst nightmare and the source of my every defeat. I can’t trust my wayward heart to remain steadfast, but I can endure and prevail as I wait and rely upon God’s invincible Spirit that strives to make me thrive, and redefines my character, igniting my sparking courage from shame into flame. “The counsel of the Lord is for those who reverence Him, and He will make them to know His covenant” (v.14).

A family situation we have been following lately involves a pastor whose wife contracted pneumonia recently and on the heels of that, meningitis, which sent her into a coma. For the last couple weeks, this mother of four young girls has been on life support, unable to breathe on her own. The doctor told the husband it was doubtful his wife would ever surface from her unconscious state. He, the pastor of a church in Rainbow just north of us, wrote in his blog Feb. 3rd http://carolposton.blogspot.com:

“Psalm 34 ministered to Carol’s brother Martin and to me today. Those who seek the LORD lack no good thing. We desperately want and need Carol restored to us and I miss Carol passionately, but God is good and we will lack nothing that is good for us, as God sees best in His Sovereign timing. With aching heart, Pastor Craig.”

This morning Carol emerged, tired, but is now breathing on her own, speaking and in her right mind, the result of prayers offered up world-wide. It occurred once again to Debbie and me that the Lord is indeed our Shepherd, and we are lacking in nothing. And surely in Him we can place our full trust, this One Who is the God of our Salvation. Yet when we wait upon Him, we come to know His compassion and care, and as He leads us out of our distresses we find that His promises are sure. We would like to go through life with hindsight discernment, but in a sense we have that with God’s promise to “instruct us in the way we should go.” When we follow by faith and not by sight, our trust in Him grows as does our wisdom and understanding. Applying God’s Truth to this world’s circumstances sets in motion a spiritual dynamic that produces supernatural effects, demonstrating an otherworldliness of the power that thus works within us. Regardless of how the world may view the process or the result, such dynamic will always accomplish a good and perfect end, for those called to reflect the deeper magic of God’s redemption and rest. We are called to suffer, carrying about in our body the dying of Jesus, that by His triumph He may exhibit through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place… from arms of death or the deepest grave.

Rejoice!