I was on social media, glancing through things to see if any of my loved ones had posted anything new whenI saw a post from someone I used to know. This someone is a 'Christian' and her post was from a so-called 'Christian' preacher. It was a link to a video which I did not watch. I very much wish there had been a transcript of the video because I would love to have skimmed over it to get a better idea of the content.
I did get enough of an idea from the title though. It had to do with not wasting your angel. There was a subtitle that spoke of not wasting God's protection. I couldn't help mentally shaking my head at that one. How far must the human mind go to come to the conclusion that we mere mortals can waste anything our holy God sees fit to give us? Yes, we are all guilty of wasting the time He has given us. Just one example of that is this very post I'm writing. While I do not consider it to be wasted time, it is taking my time, taking me, away from those the Lord has given into my care. But even with that thought in mind I know the Lord wants this written or I wouldn't be sitting here writing it.
And yet...
My human mind marvels at how important a person must believe themselves to be to ever believe they have the ability to waste God's protection.
God, the God that created the world from nothing, the God that spoke things into existance, isn't going to allow mere mortals the ability to control any protection He sees fit to bestow upon them.
I'm left wondering just what that man thinks it took to get him out of bed this morning? To see to it that he didn't have a car accident yesterday? To save him from all the folly he commits every day? To give him the very breath he takes in? And whether or not that man sees those very things as the Lord's protection and if so...then how is that protection given to him? Is it because that man willed it so, did he chose to breath each breath, to wake up this morning, to avoid a vehicular accident? Or is that kind of protection somehow different than the protection supposedly given by 'your' angel?
Regardless of how he feels or thinks about all of those things it would appear that man somehow has the ability to control God's protection and somehow, someway, we can control whether or not we use or waste 'our' angels.
I don't pretend to understand the thought process behind that kind of thinking but I will say that it doesn't surprise me. It goes hand in hand with man's belief that he or she has the ability to control our own salvation.
I was recently talking to a relative about marriage and divorce and I had to ask this relative if they believed in God, if they believed in Christ. The answer I got was that this person believes in God, that 'He gets me through every day'. And yet this same person gave no response to whether or not they believed in Christ. I didn't press the issue. I was content, at the moment, with the knowledge that they professed a belief in God because of the direction I needed to go to continue our conversation about marriage, divorce, and the sinful nature of non-Christians. And in that moment I was using the term 'Christian' loosely because it was needed for that particular conversation. I simply could not move that conversation into deeper territory. The person I was talking to was in a fragile state of mind and I doubted their ability to grasp what I was saying and didn't wish to alienate them, at least not that day. So a professed belief in God was good enough for me that day. And in the whole scheme of things it is a start. At least an admission of 'He gets me through every day' admits a reliance on the Lord that many do not even profess.
But today, as I ponder on how someone, a someone that leads others, can think they have the ability to waste God's protection, I also ponder on how far men go to believe in 'God' and just where they think they stand in that belief.
Fallen man, according to some people, can control their own salvation but now it would seem that they can also control God's protection.
Years ago I heard someone say that we should always pray and ask 'God' to surround us with His angels, to have His angels protect us. Maybe this idea that we should not waste 'our' angel stems from that. I don't know.
What I do know is that I cannot waste my Lord's protection. He will send legions of angels to protect me if He deems fit and He will deny me the protection of a single angel if He deems fit and there is NOTHING I can do to change what He has set in store for me.
I was recently talking with my husband about situations where it would seem that someone survived something they should not have survived only to lose their life shortly thereafter to another cause. My husband told me of a movie he saw years ago about people that were cheating death only to have death persue them. I never saw that movie but understood the reasoning behind it. I even told my husband that I could truly understand how the lost might think that way. Afterall, if a person does not believe in Christ, or has only a surface deep belief in God, if they don't understand Scripture, than it might seem that we are always cheating death and that death persues everyone.
Without the understanding that the Lord controls all, that even our very days are numbered and we cannot change that, wouldn't it seem that we 'should' have died many times but didn't? Wouldn't it seem like we could prevent our own death, or the death of a loved one, if we but knew to do something different?
My nephew was cut badly a few months ago. This cut bled profusely, so much so that my sister had to tightly wrap his hand and rush him to the hospital. At the hospital the nurses were amazed with the cloth that my sister used for the bandage. There was nothing special about that cloth, in fact it happened to be an old cloth diaper, a diaper with a story behind how it came to be where it was when my sister needed it most, but it was the only kind of cloth that could have done what it did that day or so the nurses claimed. They said that the type of material it was made of allowed my sister to wrap my nephews hand tightly enough to keep my nephew from 'bleeding out'. In other words...that cloth saved my nephews life that day.
By man's thoughts, my sister was able to cheat death on my nephews behalf. Had she prayed for God's protection on her family when she woke that morning? Knowing my sister, I would say she probably did. Did that prayer keep her from 'wasting' the protection God wanted to give my nephew? No. The Lord has plans for my nephew that included the injury he experienced and did not include death at such a young age.
And yet I can see how the unregenerate, how those that are lost and seeking to believe in something, might see that accident as the day my nephew should have died but did not. I imagine the 'preacher' in that video I did not watch this morning might say my sister did not waste God's protection that day.
What happens then to those that die in any manner on any given day? Did they 'waste' God's protection? Did they somehow fail to pray the right way? To pray hard enough? Long enough? For the right thing? Did they bring on their own death or the death of a loved one because of their prayers or lack of? Was God simply sitting back waiting to see if He would give His protection based on how they prayed?
I'm sure there are MANY different beliefs that place man's importance or abilities above the Lords but I am so very grateful that I do not serve that God. I find comfort in knowing that my God is an all powerful, all knowing God and that He is in full control of all that happens in this world.
