God, The Mighty One

I was reading in Zephaniah chapter 4 yesterday when verse 17 jumped out at me. I spent the rest of my evening and morning thinking about this verse.

The Lord your God in your midst. The Mighty One, will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing.

I began to pray and dwell on this verse as I felt God had led me to it and that it was something I needed on a personal level. As I began to pray this verse, I broke it up into sections and meditated on it to allow God to show me what he wanted me to get out of this particular verse. I hope this helps you as much as it helped me.

1. The Lord your God in your midst. The first thing that stuck out to me is that is says “your God” it doesn’t just refer to him as God but as your God. The word your gives us ownership in this relationship. The word your means belonging to or associated with the person the speaker is addressing. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it. That the one and only God who is our Lord and Savior belongs to us. He didn’t just belong to his 12 disciplines in the past and today he doesn’t just belong to pastors and churches but to each and every Christian. However, with any type of ownership comes responsibility. As with any relationship that you are vested in you take some ownership in it. We introduce our spouses as my wife or my husband and other people refer to your spouse as your husband or your wife. This doesn’t mean that we dominate their every move because we own them as a person, but we have ownership in the relationship. This means we have responsibilities, accountabilities, and expectations that we are held to. For this relationship to succeed you have to own your actions and take care of the relationship. You spend time on your relationship, you communicate your wants, needs and desires to the other person in this relationship and you want them to do the same. This is the ownership God wants in his relationship with each of us. He wants us to put forth effort and not sit back and wait on him to do everything. He wants to share his wants, needs and desires with us regarding our relationship with him and he wants us to share the same with him. I believe he was showing me that he is tired of us sitting back waiting on him to do everything. He wants us to get up and get involved in this relationship and do our part. He wants us to put forth the effort to grow our relationship with him. He wants us to take responsibility for our actions and for the time we put in this relationship. If it takes two people working together to make any other relationship we have work, why do we expect God to do all the work in our relationship?
2. The Mighty One will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. As Christians we know that he can save us because he has saved us. He has given us salvation through his son Jesus Christ. He saved us from eternal torment known as Hell. I believe every time someone is saved that God does rejoice over it with gladness because he knows the torture and torment that he saved us from. Yes, he saved us from despair and things on this earth, but he saved us from Hell. People don’t like to talk about Hell, but we better realize that Hell is real and thousands are going their daily. On average 153,424 die every day. That is a lot of people and remember the road to Hell is wide and many are on it. I believe God was showing me in this that as Christians we need to be doing more to get people saved. We need to be witnessing to people, doing outreaches in our communities, our state, our country and the world. As I thought about this number 153,424 I wondered how many of these went to Hell. How many people that died yesterday went to Hell. Were any of those people someone I could have witnessed to if I had just taken the time to do so? If I had taken responsibility and lived up to my expectations in my relationship with God could I have stopped one person from going to Hell yesterday? I became very convicted because so many times I let other things become more important and I take my relationship with God for granted. I expect him to do all the work and I sit back and wait on him. We need to all remember who the Mighty one is that saves and do our part to get people saved. I want God to rejoice in gladness every minute of everyday because we as Christians are on fire for him and we are taking ownership in our relationship with him and by doing so people are getting saved in record numbers. When Paul preached after being filled with the Holy Spirit over 3,000 were saved. Can you imagine if Christians today began to witness after being filled with the Holy Spirit and preachers began to preach after being filled with the Holy Spirit how many people could be saved. Think about all the technology we have today that allows us to reach millions of people all over the world in a matter of seconds when all Paul had was word of mouth. See the Holy Spirit didn’t need our technology of today to save over 3,000 people through Paul but imagine what we could do with it today if we were filled with the Holy Spirit.
3. He will quiet you with his love. This one really spoke to me as well because I get so caught up in everything going on around me that my mind has trouble being quiet. The noise of the world can take over our minds and this can prevent us from hearing what God is trying to tell us or show us. At times when I am trying to pray or study the Word my mind starts thinking about what I need to be doing around the house or at work instead of focusing on God. We stay so busy in this day and time, yet we accomplish very little. We need quiet time with God. We need to disconnect from the world around us during our prayer and bible time to allow God to calm our spirit and direct our path. Let him fill you with his love and replenish us. He will take away our worries and the stresses of life that we bring on ourselves. When we focus on God and his desires for us there is a peace and calmness that comes over us. A lot of the anxiety and stresses we feel,  we bring on ourselves because we set all these goals that aren’t for us. These goals are not your purpose on this earth and once you realize this and surrender to God’s plan for your life there is a quietness and stillness in your life.
4. He will rejoice over you with singing. I believe God does rejoice over us when we receive him our personal savior, but I believe he also rejoices every time we defeat the devil. I believe he rejoices when we are tempted, and we don’t succumb to that temptation.

I love it when a verse that is so short says so much to you in your spirit. I believe as each of us read his Word that each verse has a message for us we just have to be open and willing to listen to what God has to tell us. He wants to have a personal and close relationship with each one of us but he is not going to force us.

Thanks for reading and I hope each of you have a great day in Jesus Christ!!

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