"Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy"
He who is able to keep me from stumbling.
How?
Notice that it doesn’t say, "Him who will keep you from stumbling." It says, "Him who is able to keep you from stumbling." There is a difference.
The Greek word translated here "keep" is phulasso and has as a connotation the idea of "stressing personal interest in the action" (Vine’s). In other words, I need to want for God to keep me from sin. I need to participate in the process by aligning myself with His will, His desires, His heart. I believe this is strongly related to mercy, or in the Greek charis, which has as a meaning "the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life" (Strong’s G5485). In other words, there is an interactive component about God’s keeping me from stumbling.
I need to want Him to do it. And that’s more than a feeling. It’s an attitude that determines my actions and once that’s in place, He will keep me from stumbling. But I have to want to not stumble.
There is also a longer-view piece to this. This phrase is attached to another phrase:
Him who is able to keep you from stumbling –> present you faultless before His presence
When are we presented? On the last day, after we die or after we are raptured. This is the long view. While our Father is concerned about even the smallest day-to-day issues in our lives, His concern is against the backdrop of eternity. We often concern ourselves with day-to-day issues as they affect our desires (our lusts), but God is concerned on how they will affect where we spend eternity!
I’m a school teacher. Often during the last quarter of school, the students (and, to be honest, the teachers) are so tired of the push in school. Students just want to play and it doesn’t matter where. Soon, during that quarter, discipline can become such a chore because even the best students are simply done! They want to be out in the sunshine with their friends, not cooped up in the classroom learning very uninteresting stuff like how to punctuate dialogue. But as a teacher, it’s important that I not only get them ready for next year, but that I get them ready for life. If I am to do my job with excellence, I need to have a long view of each child’s education, including the fact that time is so limited and there is so much to learn! So during spring days, I have to find better ways to teach, better ways to engage each student, better ways to convince them that they do need to learn this or that.
The Lord is often like that with us. We are so enmeshed in the feelings of the moment we fail to see the much larger picture of eternity. But the Lord sees it! And He does everything necessary to convince us that we need to obey Him in all situations in order to be presented faultless before His presence. That doesn’t mean we earn our salvation, but we must work with Him in the acceptance of our salvation. God will never foist it on us; we must embrace it. His mercy is interactive. It is His "divine influence on my heart" and it is "the reflection of that grace in my life."
He is able to keep us from stumbling, but we must trust Him! We must look to Him, obey Him, cling to Him, love Him above all other things. If we do that, He will present us faultless before His Throne of Grace.
Have I Done My Best?
By Audrey Mieir
Have I done my best for Jesus
After all He’s done for me?
Have I proven my devotion?
Have I served Him faithfully?
When I meet Him up in heaven,
His approval I shall see.
If I have done my best for Jesus,
He will do His best for me.
© 1958 Manna Music.
© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.
For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com
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