Be Still And Know

READ: Isaiah 43:2 When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. If you’ve got the impression that following God will give you the smoothest journey through life then you obviously haven’t read the Bible! From first to last in the Old Testament we discover that following God often involves suffering and rejection. And in the New Testament we meet Jesus who although fully man and fully God saw suffering at its worst even to the point of death on the Cross. And, as he promised, his disciples were hated just as he had been and most of them suffered terribly for their faith. In our verse today God says it how it is. He recognises honestly that his hearers would suffer in all sorts of ways. They would be confronted by deep and threatening waters and even have to face fire, but through it all God would be with them. The threats of life