Devotional.
Jesse is almost two, and at the moment he wants me in the room at all times.
Not nearby. In it. If I stand up he wants to know where I'm going, and if the answer is anywhere without him, we have a problem.
I secretly love it. There will come a day when I'm not the answer to everything, and I know I'll miss this. But some days it's hard.
Yesterday we were getting ready to go to the woods. The buggy and the bags had to go in the car, so I put him down and told him I'd be back in a minute.
He did not take it well. He was completely distraught.
There are two accounts of that minute.
In his, he had been left. In mine, I was outside the front door about 20 feet away, and he was never for a second not my son.
His account was completely honest. It was also completely wrong.
And it wasn't wrong because I'd ever broken a promise to him before. It was wrong because he couldn't see me. He thought I'd left.
I do exactly the same thing sometimes, just with better manners. Jesse's version goes straight to certainty and full volume. Mine stays quiet and dresses itself up as a reasonable question.
The small doubt creeps in and asks whether He's actually with me in this one.
But it's the question Paul answers in a single line.
"If God is for us, who can be against us?"
It sounds like a rallying cry. Something you say with your shoulders back.
And yet there are days I read it and it doesn't feel remotely true. It sits there on the page being true while I stand at the door like Jesse does, deciding it can't be.
But Paul wasn't writing it from an easy life. Four verses later he lists what was actually in the room: oppression, anguish, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword.
He wrote "if God is for us" with all of that going on.
So it was never a promise that nothing would come against us. It's a statement about who is on our side while things are.
When I came back through the door yesterday, I didn't put Jesse right. I didn't explain the car, or the bags, or how long a minute is.
I picked him up.
So if that doubt is troubling you today, don't forget that although it might feel like He's not in the room, He has never once left it.
He is for you. He was for you the entire time you couldn't see Him.
And He is coming back through the door.
Prayer.
Lord, if You are for us, who can be against us – a rhetorical question with only one answer: no one, nothing, no force in all creation.
If You are for us isn’t hypothetical but fact, that the God of the universe has chosen to be for me, allied with me, supporting me, fighting on my behalf.
Teach me that opposition doesn’t disappear because You’re for me, but that it becomes irrelevant in terms of ultimate outcome, that what stands against me cannot prevail when You stand with me.
Who can be against us isn’t denying that enemies exist but declaring their powerlessness compared to Your power, that whatever opposes me is outmatched by the God who supports me.
Help me face opposition with confidence, knowing that no enemy, circumstance, or force is stronger than the God who is for me, that victory is certain when You’re on my side.
Remind me that You being for me isn’t based on my worthiness but on Your choice, Your grace, Your love that decided to align with me despite everything.
Give me courage that comes from divine alliance, boldness that flows from knowing the strongest force is for me, peace that rests on the truth that nothing against me can succeed.
Let me live today with the confidence that if God is for us, who can be against us, facing everything boldly because the Almighty is on my side.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
