FP 35 Under the Umbrella

The place of safety

There is a place of safety. Not from everything the world brings against us, nor from everything Satan brings against us. But a place of safety that is protected from the internal destruction which comes as a result of coming out from under God's plan and design for mankind. Just what is this umbrella?

It is doing things God's way because He said so, because God is a God of order, and His order works. The Biblical order is very simple. God created man and placed him over his home and family. This is to be his priority, second only to his allegiance to God. Then, from man's side, He took woman and placed her alongside him to submit herself to God underneath the umbrella of man's protection and love. Next, as children are born into this union, they are to be underneath the nurture and care of dad and mom who are each under the appropriate umbrella, all coming together under God's umbrella of protection and purpose.
Envision if you will, each umbrella opened underneath the one over it, and then imagine what happens anytime one of these umbrellas are removed from God's designed order, not of hierarchy, but of protection and nurturing and care. You become, whether husband, wife, or child who has a rebellious spirit that demands your way over God's way, open to every possible evil and divisiveness known to man. When you remove yourself as a parent, you're exposing the rest of your family to destruction at worst and defilement at best, because God's way will not be mocked. Our lives cannot stand apart from the all-encompassing umbrella of His Word.

So stay under the umbrella! Don't try to do things apart from God's way. It just won't work. Instead "whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."
1 Corinthians 10:31 (ESV)

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (ESV)

This was God's instructions for Israel and it is for us today as well. May we be faithful to uphold the umbrella of God's instructions for us as His people.

Until Tomorrow,

Pastor Steve