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"God has said, 'I will never leave you; I will never abandon you.' 6 So we can be sure when we say, 'I will not be afraid, because the Lord is my helper. People can’t do anything to me.'"
Today, we return to the practical portion of the book of Hebrews. I include the last half of v.5 with today's verse because the crux of all of our problems is revealed in the words: "I will never leave you; I will never abandon you." And here, in a verse and a half, the writer to the Hebrews referred to two Old Testament passages and he showed these struggling young Hebrew believers the foundation of a secure life despite the rough storms that are encountered.
The power of God's presence comes to us in the New Covenant. When Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God, they forfeited the security and the reassurance of the presence of God in their lives, so they ran away and hid. Their perceived lack of God's presence in their lives led them to look elsewhere than to Him to address the various needs in their lives. We are no different than they.
We cannot understand or get to the place where this awful separation is in our rear view mirror until we are indwelt by God's very presence, and even then, we must grow in our trust of Him in order to really realize the reality of the New Covenant. This is a big part of our sanctification.
At the cross, for six whole hours, the Son of God was suspended between heaven and earth. And at the height of His suffering, He cried out in the deep darkness, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" This was the first time the Lord Jesus referred to His Father as "God." Since the Lord Jesus took our place, believers in Christ, now are guaranteed intimacy with God. But, it does not happen experientially all at once. It is a process.
Before they encountered that storm that night on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples had seen the Lord Jesus do so many incredible things, yet, they lacked trust in Him, still. Like us, they had to experience the blackness of the night on the water to really see the Lord Jesus for who He really was: God.
So, He sent them out into a storm, and, He chose not to be with them in the boat. He sent them out alone, deliberately, and He went up into the hills to pray for them. How many of the storms of our lives are made up of these two elements, trouble that comes and overwhelms us, and the seeming absence of the Lord in the context of those troubles. All the while, He is up on the hillside praying for us.
After the storm had blown for hours and the disciples were in deep distress, the Lord Jesus came to them, walking on the water. When they saw Him they are scared out of their minds because they thought He is an uninvited ghost. He reassured them with the word "it" which is always that thing we see that scares us to death. He said to them, "It is I, do not be afraid." The "it" was Him, and, the thing that scares us the most is really Him. And, after He stepped into their boat, they began to listen to Him like they had never listened before.
God's seeming absence is sometimes overwhelming in our lives, yet it is so very necessary. He deliberately made Mary and Martha wait four days after they had requested His presence, and meanwhile their brother, Lazarus, died. He made Thomas wait in his doubt and disbelief for eight days until he revealed His risen status to Him. He does these things in order to train us to see Him with our hearts.
Every believer in Christ struggles to get to this depth of intimacy with the Lord, and, yet, this is our answer to every problem we have. God is with us and He will never leave or abandon us. On that Pentecost day, just fifty days after the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, the Spirit indwelt those gathered in that upper room in Acts 2, and, they were changed people. We are no different than they.
This leads us into v.6 of today's passage which reads, "I will not be afraid, because the Lord is my helper. People can’t do anything to me."
God juxtaposes our fear with His presence, and, we get to the place of not fearing when we choose to make the Lord our "helper." The Greek word used here for "helper" is a compound noun composed of two root words which mean "cry out" and "run." God runs to aid us when we cry out to Him.
Due to our fallenness, even though we may be born gain, we lack something which only the Lord Jesus can supply, and, it is His pronounced presence in our lives. The Lord calls out to us to, "Cry out to me and I will comfort you." And, when this transaction takes place in a given hour of each day, we will conclude, "No one can harm us because the Lord Jesus has our backs."
Integral to our intimacy with God is realizing that nothing in this world is our answer. When my middle son, at the age of 24, went into cardiac failure a few years ago, I found myself thrust into the darkest place I have ever been. Even now, I find it most difficult to visit that darkest of places, yet, I over and over discover the Lord Jesus there. It is not the only place I discover Him, but nonetheless, this is my story. I do not like going through that pain again and again, yet, my intimacy with the Lord increases when I go there. You see, it is there that I see Him most vividly. It is there that I hear Him most acutely. And, I discover a great truth about the Lord when I go there: I discover the Lord doesn't love my suffering, but, He loves me. And, in the end of it all, it is about my heart being captured by this God who loves me much more than I can imagine.
