In J.I. Packer's book, Knowing God, he relates a story of a friend who had been effectively kicked out of his ministry over some disagreement. In discussing the matter, his friend is cited as saying, "It doesn't matter, for I have known God, and they have not." I cannot recommend this book highly enough, but this particular story strikes me as it seems to have struck Packer on first experiencing it. This man, faced with total rejection from the people who should have been ministering into his life, took it all in stride and looked onward to the work God was doing. He had no doubt in God's faithfulness, because he knew God well.

God is absolute in His ways. There is no variance with Him. What He has set out to do, He will do, and there is no force that can stand against Him. God can state with certainty that His word will be carried out, His will shall be established, and His plan will come to fruition.

​When God grew angry with the people of Israel for worshiping a golden calf and laid down a justified condemnation of them, Moses went straight to the promises of God to plead on their behalf.

Moses understood that God would do as He had promised. No amount of sin practiced in the camp of Israel could make God cut off the line of Abraham that He had promised to multiply and through whom the whole world would be blessed. Israel still faced judgement; three thousand men died that very day, for starters. But the promise of God would be carried out. On this, Moses knew he could rely, and David would echo this understanding repeatedly across his psalms.

Those who have known God best have known His faithfulness. Abraham and Moses, who talked to God as a friend; David, called a man after God's own heart; the apostles, after walking with Jesus and receiving the Holy Spirit; all of them understood keenly that God would do what God set out to do. There was no room for doubt.

Did they recognize God's faithfulness because they knew Him so well, or were they able to know Him so well because they trusted Him and saw His works displayed? Well. We can seek to know Him, and we can seek to trust Him, and it is only a matter of time before one begins to inform the other.

This life is not meant to be done alone. The basic promise God makes over and over again throughout scripture, in fact, is that He will be with us. Ever since leaving Eden, mankind has been cut off from relationship with God, and the condemnations laid down on Adam and Eve broke their relationships with each other and with nature. The work of restoring relationship with God is fundamental; all other relationships flow from it.

The Law was a mediator. Within very tight restraints, the people of Israel could experience a relationship with God again. They could experience being His people and having Him as their God. David wrote many psalms where he found his rest in knowing that God was with him. Jeremiah was given an incredibly difficult job, and God affirms twice in the first chapter that there is no need to fear because He would be with him.

There is much that can be said about the role of community in the life of a Christian, but that community is founded on having relationship with God. All of the promises of scripture culminate in the person of Jesus, who initiates a relationship with us that does not require constant sacrifice, or extensive ritual, or any mediator but Christ Himself. The final fulfillment of the promises of God is found in the New Heaven and New Earth, when God dwells with us for eternity.

​Our first desire must be for Him. Every other desire worth having is built on it.

This will be short, as I'm coming down with something and it is deeply affecting my mental clarity. I'll just give an overview and some passages and encourage you to read them further.

The primary thrust of today's reading was about God marking and protecting those who are His. Psalm 91 is a general promise that God is with His people, to ensure that no evil lays hold of them. The motif of staying safe and secure while terror rages around the people of God is also found in Exodus 12, where Moses begins in verse 21 to direct the people concerning the first Passover, in which the people were marked as God's and calamity passed over them to afflict the Egyptians around them. While specific interpretation may vary, Revelation 7 begins with the account of 144,000 individuals marked as belonging to God. In Matthew 18, Jesus condemns anything that causes one of His people, especially a child, to stumble; even if the thing causing one to stumble is their own body. But this is all contrasted with the cry of Job in Job 3, when he curses the day of his birth and asks why he was even allowed to grow old if this was all that was in store for him.

Was God not protecting Job? Well, yes, He was. The most overt thing is that God places limitations on what Satan can do to Job in chapters 1 and 2, protecting Job from the full scope of Satan's trials. More to the point, though, none of these passages suggest that hard times and great trials will not come. Matthew 18 especially focuses on the fact that things will arise to be a stumbling block in the path of His people. But God will rightly judge all those things which cause trouble for His people, and will deliver His people ultimately out of the full scope of evil's reach. We will endure some pain in this life, but the greatest weapons evil has against us will never prosper. If we are His, He will see to our ultimate rescue.