Shelter

One of the things I loved the most about the first home we purchased was the covered carport. Let’s just say I got rather spoiled growing up and had missed having one during the years of college and our early marriage. Shelter is a good thing. I enjoyed the brief time we lived there, but now I miss having a carport to shelter me from the elements. 

Speaking of living, Psalms is where I've been for a few months now, and this morning as I pondered back over some of the ones that spoke to me most, I realized that several of them involve shelter. In Psalm 5, David prays for God’s protection from the wicked that seek to harm him. He seeks God early in the morning (vs. 3) and says, “I will order my prayer to Thee and eagerly watch” (NASB). David earnestly prays to God and eagerly waits with expectation for Him to accomplish His work according to His nature. David knows His God, and he trusts Him with all of his problems and needs—he seeks shelter from the only One who could possibly help him, and he honestly asks for God's best for him as he pours out his heart through the Psalms.

How often do we when seeking God’s shelter spit out a rushed prayer and then not really expect God to do anything with it? How often do we pray a feeble prayer that is asking God to go against His nature? How well do we know God’s true nature or His will for our lives?

 Recently, I have heard two different people in authority over children say that more than anything what parents want is their children’s happiness. That disturbs me on a deep level. I am a parent, too, and I get the desire for our children to be happy, but I also understand that regardless of what I want for my child (or myself for that matter), God’s wants are better, and what He desires above all else is holiness. The problem with holiness, even in Christian households, is that it goes against the grain of our fleshly nature as well as how the world operates. What results when we seek holiness and find resistance? Do we quit or do we persevere? What determines which road we take? Does our desire for shelter for our children or ourselves at some point become an idol?

David is described as a man after God’s own heart. He was frail and flawed—human—like we are, but even in his extreme need for shelter, he understood that God doesn’t despise or reject a heart that seeks after Him. We learn from him that when we are broken in spirit and contrite in heart (Ps. 51:17), God can and will offer us the shelter we need; it just may not look like what we had in mind at the time.

Another favorite Psalm of mine is the 91^st. This Psalm addresses trusting in God and finding security in Him and begins like this: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.” Shelter is found in the close abiding. My prayer is that as we seek shelter, it is only in the One who has the compassion to forgive, the cure for sin, the power to save, and the ability to heal our hurts.