You know the verse:  ‘If God is for us, who can be against us’ (Romans 8:31). It sounds so… comforting, so encouraging, and we know it is true.  The problem is, the ‘IF’: ‘If God is for us’.  And my experience is that most of us have concluded that:  ‘no, he probably isn’t for us.’

Oh, we know he loves us, and we believe that he has great hope for us, maybe even great plans, but we don’t believe that he is for us.  As I talk to Christians, many seem to view God as out there somewhere, not really too interested in our day to day lives.  They see him as a coach maybe or a teacher.  He has given us instruction on the best way to live, the best way to play the game, but now he has put the ball in our court and it’s up to us to make the best of it.  The ‘rules’, they would say, state that he can’t enter the game.  Now is our time.  Sure, he will hold us when we fall, but then it is once again up to us.

I feel that way a lot. Seems like God seldom comes through the way I had hoped, and so I too conclude that it is God who is holding out on me.  It’s no wonder everyone is against us; God is not really for us, at least not right now.

But that is not the point that Paul was making.  Listen to the next verse:  ‘He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?’ (Romans 8:32).  And wasn’t it Jesus himself who said that ‘surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age’ (Matt 28:20).

The first century Christians certainly lived like this were true, seldom taking a step without checking with high command, totally dependent on God entering the game with them.   And not just them.   Just read the biographies of great men like D.L. Moody, Watchman Nee, Hudson Taylor or A.W. Tozer.  They each had a sense and a dependence on the moment by moment presence and provision of our God.

You see, it’s a rhetorical question.  Of course God is for us.  He hasn’t sent us out into a game, he has invited us to join him in THE Game.  ‘For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that he may strongly support those whose heart is completely his’ (2 Chronicles 16:9 NAS.

He is for you Christian.  Seek him; ask for his help … like the persistent widow.   Never stop asking, never stop depending on him to come through, for if God is for you, who can be against you?

To the King,

David