The peace of our souls does not have to rise and fall with unpredictable people or situations. Our feelings will shift, of course. People do affect us. But the peace of our souls is tethered to all that God is. And though we can’t predict His specific plans, the fact that God will work everything for good is a completely predictable promise.
Psalm 91 says that God has created a shelter for you, a place where the covering shadow of His love thoroughly shades you from the high-noon heat of temptation. Your God, it says, is a refuge. Your God is a fortress. Your God is trustworthy. And your God is a deliverer. The arrows can fly by day, pestilence can stalk in the darkness, destruction can lie in wait for you right in the middle of the afternoon. “A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not approach you. . . . For you have made the Lord, my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place” (Ps. 91:7, 9). And then . . . you are safe.
As the storm bursts over the world, do you know where He wants you to hide? In Him.
Jesus feels for thee; Jesus consoles thee; Jesus will help thee. No monarch in his impregnable fortress is more secure than the cony in his rocky burrow. The Master of ten thousand chariots is not one whit better protected than the little dweller in the mountain’s cleft. In Jesus the weak are strong, and the defenceless safe; they could not be more strong if they were giants, or more safe if they were in heaven. Faith gives to men on earth the protection of the God of heaven. More they cannot need, and need not wish. The conies cannot build a castle, but they avail themselves of what is there already: I cannot make myself a refuge, but Jesus has provided it, His Father has given it, His Spirit has revealed it, and lo, again tonight I enter it, and am safe from every foe.
To love means to open ourselves to suffering. Shall we shut our doors to love, then and ‘be safe’?” That’s the only alternative, really. But locking ourselves up and never facing another person won’t fix what’s really going on in our souls.
No one is safe by his own strength, but he is safe by the grace and mercy of God.
God is my shepherd and I am his little lamb.
He feeds me
He guides me
He looks after me.
I have everything I need.
Inside, my heart is very quiet, as quiet as lying still on soft green grass in a meadow by a little stream.
Even when I walk through the dark, scary, lonely places, I won’t be afraid because my Shepherd knows where I am.
He is here with me; He keeps me safe He rescues me.
He makes me strong and brave.
He is getting wonderful things ready for me, especially for me, everything I ever dreamed of!
He fills my heart so full of happiness I can’t hold it all inside.
Wherever I go I know God’s never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love will go to.
The Jesus Storybook Bible
After a hard day scrambling to find your way around in the world, it’s assuring to come home to a place you know. God can be equally familiar to you. With time you can learn where to go for nourishment, where to hide for protection , where to turn for guidance. Just as your earthly house is a place of refuge, so God’s house is a place of peace.
Noah was shut in with his God. “Come thou into the ark,” was the Lord’s invitation, by which he clearly showed that he himself intended to dwell in the ark with his servant and his family. Thus all the chosen dwell in God and God in them. Happy people to be enclosed in the same circle which contains God in the Trinity of his persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. Let us never be inattentive to that gracious call, “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee, and hide thyself as it were for a little moment until the indignation be overpast.”