Good morning everyone,

Psalm 78:65-66-Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a strong man shouting because of wine. 66 And he put his adversaries to rout; he put them to everlasting shame.

One of the most amazing things about God is His patience with His people, like us. In this (looong!) Psalm God describes how He handed over Israel to it’s enemies for judgment because they had been so disobedient even after all His wondrous works in blessing them. Yet in their pain and suffering God showed up "as from sleep" to destroy His enemies, and deliver them!

Something like this can be so refreshing to anyone who has struggled with being faithful and obedient in times of struggle and doubt with God. Although God will "give us over" in our disobedience if we persist in it and don’t judge ourselves (1 Corinthians 11 v 31,32), He will never allow the enemy to have ultimate victory over His children. Although God’s reasoning for "awaking as from sleep" to defeat the enemy usually isn’t the same as what we think.

I think it is crucial to remind ourselves that God is more passionate about His name being glorified than anything else (Isaiah 42 v8). God will always desire our faithfulness/love even if we continually fail to obey Him and are being judged with hardships. Yet God is always passionate about His own name and work being fulfilled in the earth because of Who He is, not what we failed to do or even try and do for His name. Human nature is such that we think that we must be doing something worthy of God for Him to move mightily on our behalf. Yet ,God’s grace is such that He invites us to obedience in order to enjoy Him and witness to others the goodness of His works. But we are never to think our good works is the main motivation of God being good to us and moving on our behalf, that’s not grace!(Romans 4 v4) God moves ultimately because of His goodness in spite of us, like He did for Israel, and as He continues to do so many times for us today. It is seeing His goodness in our unfaithfulness that I believe we come to realize how good He truly is.

In His Love, Ld