In His Grip
By Jon Walker
So be careful to do what the LORD your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Deuteronomy 5:32 (NIV)
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Occasionally, I sign my letters, “In his grip.” I started doing it during a tough time in life when I realized God had me in his grip with a strength that would never let me go. I could not run for him or hide from him.
Echoing Peter’s statement to Jesus, “I had nowhere else to go” (John 6:68), and wrapped in the strength of his grip was the calling he’d place on my life. I kept trying to get away, but, in a sense, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Psalm 32:3 NIV).
God told Jeremiah that, even before he placed the prophet in his mother’s womb, he had a plan for the poet. And Jeremiah followed that calling, until he, twice, told God he wanted to quit.
God, I can’t.
God told Jeremiah that he had his hand on him, and that he couldn’t quit.
Jeremiah, I can.
God created Jeremiah for a purpose. Jeremiah was part of God plan, just like you are part of God’s plan. He was a voice for God, needed in that specific time and place. You are no less.
God leads us; he goes before and behind us. He can, even though we can’t.
And that is why “I’m absolutely convinced that nothing – nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable – absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us” (Romans 8:38-39 MSG).
In his grip.
If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2009 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.
