"I Am the LORD"

I've been following a one-year Bible reading plan, and for the last several days I've been in the book of Leviticus. As I read through chapters 21 and 22, I was amazed at how many times God said, "I am the LORD." In Leviticus, God was giving the Israelites all of the laws He expected them to live by. This was more than the Ten Commandments, this was about what was clean and unclean, how to properly offer sacrifices, how to treat diseases, how to stay sexually pure, and so much more.

Time and time again, after giving a command, God said, "I am the LORD." It spoke to my heart this morning in a way it never has before. It was a stark reminder to me that God is God and I am not. These passages allowed the Lord to show me just what it means for Him to be sovereign. God has the right to tell us what is right and what is wrong. God can allow whatever He wants to happen in this world for one simple reason—He is the LORD. He created it all, He owns it all, and He is sovereign over it all.

All of this reminded me of Job. This upright and blameless man, one who walked with God, had everything taken from him in one day. He lost his wealth, his children, and his health, one after the other after the other. Just as I would have, he questioned God. After I've been faithful to you all this time, why? He even got to the place where he wished he had never been born. And the whole time, God was allowing it. Why?

When you get to chapter 38 in Job, God finally answers. Read through what God has to say in this chapter and the ones that follow. To sum it up, He said to Job, "I am the LORD." He didn't mean that He is a spiteful or cruel God. He meant that He is a God who is sovereign. He meant that He needed Job to see, and He needs us to see, that no matter how bad things in this life get, He is still on His throne and He is still in control. He needed Job to understand that, even if we lose everything in this life, He is still there, and He is all we need.

I know that this knowledge doesn't take away the pain of your circumstances. I know that loss causes deep hurt, and it is a process to get through it. I don't believe that you ever get over a great loss, I believe that you get through it, and you are changed because of it. But I also believe that when you lean on the sovereign God, the loss becomes easier to bear. When you accept that God is on the throne and you don't have to understand everything that happens in this life, you can give that grief to the Lord and He will help you carry it.

So I challenge you to stop trying to understand and make sense of everything, especially the bad things, of this world. There are some things that we simply will not understand this side of Heaven. Instead, go to God, and tell Him that you do understand that He is sovereign. Tell Him that you don't understand, but you want to lean on Him. Get to the place where He is all you need. Let Him be God. And then remember, there is a day coming when He will come back and make things right again. Things will make sense on that day. Until then, let Him say to your heart, "I am the LORD. Trust me."