Free from strivings

"You have also delivered me from the strivings of my people; You have kept me as the head of the nations. A people I have not known shall serve me. – 2 Samuel 22v44

‘It’s a troublesome world. All the people who are in it are troubled with troubles almost every minute.’

So go the words from my favourite Dr Suess book. We do indeed live in a troublesome world full of fightings and wars and contentions and quarrels and strivings. We can get so caught up in all this stuff that we forget that these are not God’s plan for His people.

God wants us out of that. We have to live in this physical world, true enough. We have to go to work, deal with people, pay the bills, do the washing, cut the grass, pay taxes, and all the rest.

The great truth is that in Christ we can rise above really being a part of it. In other places God talks about lifting us up into ‘heavenly places’ in Christ Jesus. He talks about dwelling on the high place like a mountain deer, with stable footing free from the slips and falls that hold the world.

Here David praises God that He has been delivered from the strivings of the people. My problem is that sometimes I like the striving.

God doesn’t want us mired in all that stuff. It is beneath God’s people to let ourselves get caught up in it. Lets enjoy God’s deliverance from the strivings of the people.