“YOU ARE FOR ME” BY KARI JOBE

Psalm 56:8-13 NIV
You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.
My enemies will retreat when I call to you for help.
This I know: God is on my side!
I praise God for what he has promised;
yes, I praise the Lord for what he has promised.
I trust in God, so why should I be afraid?
What can mere mortals do to me?
I will fulfill my vows to you, O God,
and will offer a sacrifice of thanks for your help.
For you have rescued me from death;
you have kept my feet from slipping.
So now I can walk in your presence, O God,
in your life-giving light.

Kari describes how she wrote this song in a season of brokenness and in a time when she simply needed to confess over and over, “I know that you are for me.” I learned of this song when it came on the radio (K-LOVE) at the right time in my life. I was a broken man at that point—devastated and suffering.

My world did not seem to have anything real in it. Why was God not helping me figure it out? Why did it seem like he was silent? In my darkest time, crouched in the corner of my room it was these words on my lips that seemed so hard to believe, but I knew that they were all I had to go on. While questions soaked in my mind like a never ending rain, it was choosing to trust that God was there and would help me see through the night to find the day again.

Whatever comes our way in life, one thing that must remain true is that God is on our side. He fights for us and guides us through the perils we face and through it all he desires us to experience his love and goodness.

God has not promised us a life with no pain, with no trouble, with no challenges, or with no hard questions. What he has promised is that he is looking out for us and he is always there when we need him.

Psalm 139:23 ESV
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!

God knows what we are feeling and thinking. He knows our human frailty, how doubt and disbelief are knocking at the door when we find ourselves facing such trying circumstances. We might think we can handle it on our own, but those who have tried it eventually figure out that they have only deluded themselves into believing a lie. Praise God we are not left alone and that he is there holding us up when we can barely stand.

I find inspiration in the record where God proclaims that he will bring Israel back from their exile in Babylon and fulfill the promise he made to their ancestors—a promise to do great things for them as his people.

Jeremiah 29:10-14 ESV
For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.  Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.  You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

We are God’s people too, and God has a plan for our lives. Sometimes it may not go as we expect but God has not discarded us even if we are unfaithful to him. If we but will raise our eyes and seek his face we will see that he has always been doing everything “for us.”