A Pentecostal Pastor's Word for 2023

God Is With Us

The world is screaming at the top of its lungs, “God is not with us.” War and rumors of war abound. Environmental destruction persists. Famine, drought, disease—the list goes on.

As a Christian and as a pastor I feel both the responsibility to acknowledge that it really does feel like God is not with us, and to prophetically confront it by contradicting it.

This morning (Jan 1), I’m preaching on the lectionary’s selection from the prophets, Isaiah 63:7-9. In it, the prophet recounts the steadfast love of the Lord by recalling the events of the exodus:

In all their affliction he was afflicted,

And the angel of his presence saved them (v. 8).

The “angel of his presence” is clearly the angel of the Passover. But what is so striking about this passage is God’s identification with his enslaved people—“In all their affliction, he was afflicted.”

There’s more than one way to be with someone. You can be with someone as a master is with a slave. Masters and slaves spend a lot of time together. They even get to know each other over the length of their lives, and perhaps might care for one another. But their relationship will always be one of master to slave.

One might also be with someone as freeperson is with a slave. Again, you can spend long hours and chapters of life together, but you’re only truly with each other in a limited way. One of you is free, the other is still in chains.

Finally, you can be with someone as a slave is with a slave. Therein lies true solidarity, a true togetherness. You are with each other in predicament and destiny. You get each other.

As a slave is with a slave, so God is with us. Again, Isaiah says, “in all their affliction he was afflicted.” God doesn’t just stand by and cheer us on as we survive a whipping. God gets whipped with us. God doesn’t just stand by and watch hopefully that your prospective slave master will pay a good price and treat you well; he puts himself up for sale with you. And he will be treated well or badly with you, because he always says that he is the two-for-one deal.

He won’t ever abandon us in our slavery. And he won’t ever leave us in our slavery either. Because he joins us in our slavery precisely to lead us out of slavery: “he emptied himself, by taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:7).

And again, Hebrews says, “he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (2:14).

The world is screaming, but God’s still small voice pierces the roar, saying to each and every one of us, “I am with you in your slavery.”

May 2023 be the year of God with us.

May we remember and put into practice that even when we are at our nastiest selves,

when we’re behaving like miserable sinners,

God is with us.