“The Lord your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy. (Zephaniah 3:17 NASB 1995)
The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he
will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah
3:17 NIV)
I’m sharing today’s verse in both
New American Standard (1995) and New International versions because it was a
misreading of the NASB that first impressed me with the verse. As I read the
verse about 20 years ago, what I read was that He will quiet me in His love.
Me? Quiet? While part of me desired that even then, a bigger part of me laughed
because the idea that I could be anything but loud, forceful, and longwinded
was laughable. About this time, I was also angry about some things that had
taken place and bound and determined I was not going to “pretend to be someone
I wasn’t” anymore. At the time, I was introducing myself to new coworkers as “the
Wicked Witch of the West,” and they believed me.
Twenty years later, I suspect I’m as
loud, forceful, and longwinded, and people still find fault with me for it, but
I think my temper has quieted. It’s not raging all the time. I am more at peace
with peace than I was, no matter how much farther I need to go to suit the preferences
of some.
But, what Scripture said was not that I
will be quieted by His love, but that He would be quiet – stop rebuking, shouting,
being angry. He promised Israel that someday, He would replace remonstration
with rejoicing. This morning, the Yuck Factor comes to mind. When I work on a
craft project, I spend (a lot of) time grinding my teeth, fuming – and, if I were
the sort to use bad language, using bad language over what I’m working on. It’s
not right. I’ve made too many mistakes. Grumble… growl… But when I’m done, I’m happy with what all the
frustration has wrought.
God doesn’t have my failings, but the
fact is that in crafting something, there are times when one has to work
against the thing being crafted – or at least the thing crafted would feel as
if it were being worked against if it were sentient. There are things God doesn’t
like in my life, and the energy and attention to that thing can certainly feel
like anger being directed at me. The point is that when the process is
completed, as the Victorious Warrior, God can be happy with what He hath wrought.
Continuing with the crafting metaphor,
there are things that I made that I’m glad I made. I use them for whatever I
made them for – no big deal. And then there are the things that I make that I
have to share. Some of it is, “See what I made? Me! I did it.” And some of it
is “This thing is worthy of notice. It doesn’t matter so much who made it
(though, yes, I did) as it matters that it was made.” In the case of the verse,
the focus is on the Maker. He is present. He is victorious. He is joyful enough
to be expressive.
Another verse comes to mind, in which
God asks Satan, “Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my
servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and
upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” (Job 1:3) While none of us
wants to face what Job faced, this passage has some of the same feel. I can
only pray that when and if I face my testing time, I don’t embarrass God too
much. But could it be that there are times when God might be willing to say, “Have
you considered my servant (insert your name here)?” That is His promise.
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