A sheep stood paralyzed on the side of the river’s steep edge fearing that he might slip in and be washed away. He looked back and his master was nowhere in sight. He tried with all his might to back up the steep embankment. In agony, his thoughts rested on the fact that his master was gone and there was no one to help him. We are like that sheep when we are in trouble. We look to see if God is watching and ready to help. Instead, we all too often see no one. We don’t realize that God is often the nearest to us when we feel that He has forsaken us.
It’s easy to feel that God is far off. In our moments when it seems no one is there for us, we like to include God with everyone else. We like to loose faith and believe that He is gone. Sometimes we know God is up there or somewhere, but we don’t believe that He is by our side and on our side.
God is always with us, but we tend to not be with Him. Many of us don’t realize how close God really is. We panic in His arms wondering why we are all alone. Deep inside we just love to be alone. We live in a sinful world and instinct tells us that we are alone and we can do anything we wish. We are naturally sinful and when we sin, we separate ourselves from God. God wants us to be with Him, but we often push him away with our actions.
We can know God is near by recognizing and knowing Him. I don’t always like trusting people that I am not sure of just as I don’t always like to trust in Jesus. When really He should be my all in all. I should be able to always have confidence in Him, but I don’t and I can’t. I don’t even expect to. I ask and expect Jesus to do it for me. He commands us over and over again to trust in Him and He is an enabler of His commands. Even though I am not perfect and I know that too well, I still try to believe in Him and He does help me. I still feel alone sometimes, but I can look back and see all the other times I called out to God and I find again and again that He had been and will be there the whole time. It takes time to trust that God is always with us, but the sooner you acknowledge Him, the easier it will be to trust Him in the future.
God is right in front of us and we need to look Him in the eye and grasp His hand. You may be realizing that you have overlooked Jesus or have assumed you didn’t need His help. Just as that sheep could not escape danger without the shepherds help, you can’t either. The sheep finally realized that his shepherd was sitting right in front of him the whole time. It had been looking too far away. With new found joy, the sheep willingly let the shepherd gently lift him out of danger to higher ground. Let Jesus lift you out today.
