Never Flinch

Deuteronomy 31:8, “It is the Lord Who goes before you; He will [march] with you; He will not fail you or let you go or forsake you; [let there be no cowardice or flinching, but] fear not, neither become broken [in spirit – depressed, dismayed, and unnerved with alarm]. (Amplified Bible)

Do you ever find yourself coming back to the same lessons? Do you return to the same or similar situation that produces in you a panic, or perhaps anger? Does life feel like you are spinning your wheels, and does that sensation produce frustration, impatience, or a need to regain control? When you see a crisis coming for the first or even the tenth time; does it make you flinch?

I am going to say that it is the flinch that brings the crisis around for a second time. At least that is where I am in my relationship with God. It is in the flinch that our lack of trust in God is revealed. The flinch shows that our faith is not in God going before us. It shows that our relationship had, if only momentarily, a gap.

Look at what Isaiah prophesied about Jesus in Chapter 53:11-12. This is from The Message, “Out of that terrible travail of soul, He’ll see that it’s worth it and be glad He (Jesus) did it. Through what He experienced, My Righteous One, My Servant, will make many ‘righteous ones,’ as He Himself carries the burden of their sins. Therefore I will reward Him extravagantly – the best of everything, the highest honors – Because He looked death in the face and didn’t flinch, because He embraced the company of the lowest. He took on His own shoulders the sin of many, He took up the cause of all the black sheep.”

Christ trusted so completely in the Father that He never flinched, not even in the face of death. And after not flinching there came the reward. The end of the lesson.

And yet I know that I flinch at so many crises much less than death. I flinch at a smaller paycheck. I flinch over letters arriving in the mailbox. I flinch over traffic. I flinch over phone calls. I flinch over Doctor visits. I flinch and flinch and flinch. But in Jesus name He is occupying more and more of my soul. And in time the flinching is decreasing.

Oswald Chambers wrote this about worry… another form of flinching. “’…do not worry about your life…’(Matt 6:25) Don’t take the pressure of your provision upon yourself. It is not only wrong to worry, it is unbelief; worrying means we do not believe that God can look after the practical details of our lives, and it is never anything but those details that worry us. Have you ever noticed what Jesus said would choke the Word He puts in us? Is it the devil? No – ‘the cares of this world’ (Matt 13:22)”

To never flinch is not something I can will upon myself. To never flinch does not come by playing ostrich and burying my head in the sand. To never flinch is something that can only be born out of an increasing awareness and relationship to Christ inside me. Father help me to never flinch.