You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall. As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him. For who is God besides the LORD? And who is the Rock except our God? It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great. You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn. Psalm 18: 28-36, NIV.
Blessed Heavenly Father, how we love You, and enjoy being in Your presence! We know that You are always with us, and will never leave us nor forsake us, so we wait to hear from You as we study Your Holy Word today. In the precious name of Jesus we do pray. Amen.
What a mighty and wonderful God we serve! Our hearts rejoice to know that we belong to Him! His right hand sustains us! For some reason, there is always a clear distinction, in Scripture, between the right hand and the left hand. On this subject, I would like to say, as I have said before, the message in Scripture is divinely inspired, and brought to us in the vocabulary of human beings! I believe that God sees right-handed persons and left-handed persons equally. I do not believe He adds anything to those who are right-handed, or takes away from those who are left-handed. Nevertheless, whenever the hand of God is mentioned in Scripture, it is either not distinguished (right or left); but when it is, it is the right hand that does the blessing, in this case, the sustaining, which is a blessing!
I have heard, that in the past, children who were left-handed, when they went to school, were forced, to learn how to use their right hand, sometimes, even using punitive measures in the process. I am glad that by the time I became a mother those measures had been abolished, at least in my country. I would not have consented to having my left-handed child change hands for writing, or for doing anything else. I believe that in order to accomplish this there are too many mental changes that have to be processed, therefore, I consider it an unhealthy practice. I have not done any studies on the subject, so I am not an authoritative voice. These are my personal impressions.
Going back to our portion of Scripture for the day, the psalmist refers to the right hand of God as His sustaining source. Truly, it is the hand of God that has kept us on the land of the living! Had it not been for His hand, many of us would have already been in the grave. As a matter of fact, it is His hand that has snatched many of us out of the grave! His hand is mighty to save! It was the mighty hand of God that redeemed Israel from the land of slavery and the power of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt (Deuteronomy 7: 8). Though men built the sanctuary, His hands established it (15: 17). Power and might are in His hand, and in His hand is the power to make individuals, or nations, great (2 Chronicles 20: 6; 1 Chronicles 29: 12: b)! Praise God, His hand is not shortened that it cannot save us (Isaiah 59: 1)! Having said all of this, in Scripture, God is described as a spirit, therefore, a hand, or hands, are, irrelevant. In God, is all power to save us unto the utmost!
But it was when He stooped down, in the person of Jesus the Son, to make us great, that the towering greatness of God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, were seen. The Son took upon Himself the nature of the creature, so that He could perfect it, thereby enabling us to live like children of God. We can be made great because the Godhead secured our greatness through the process of redemption! Sin had destroyed the image of God in His children. Yet those who accept Jesus as their Savior, and are empowered to become the “children of God,” by the spiritual re-birth, begin to experience the transformation, into His image, once again! And we live rejoicing in the work of His hands!