The ABC’s of Divine Protection

Security. That one word, perhaps more than any other, sums up what the world is searching for these days. Everybody wants to feel more secure.

Yet with every day that goes by, things get more dangerous. Disasters that just a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable are now very real possibilities. Nuclear arms in the hands of renegade terrorists…biological weapons that threaten whole cities with once-extinct diseases like small pox or bubonic plague…terrorist attacks striking closer to home than we ever imagined.

Is it possible to live in this crazy world with all its dangers and still feel secure?

Yes it is and Psalm 91 tells us how.

I’ve loved and taught on that psalm for years. But I’ve never been more grateful for it than I am right now. It was definitely written for us today. If we will just believe and act on the words God spoke to us there, we will be able to live in total freedom from fear even in the worst of times. No matter what kinds of threats arise around us, we will be able to say to the Lord like David did, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee” (Psalm 56:3).

Although promises of God’s protection are echoed many times throughout the pages of the Bible, there is no single passage that captures God’s wonderful ability and desire to deliver His people in times of danger better than Psalm 91.

Every single verse in this psalm is worth studying, but in this article we’ll focus on the first seven verses.

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.” Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler And from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, And under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, Nor of the arrow that flies by day, Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, And ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you (New King James Version)

Enveloped in the Arms of God

Those verses prove that God declares the end from the beginning! Thousands of years ago, He saw our day coming. He knew the exact dangers that would confront us in the year 2002 and He specifically promised to protect us from them.

Someone might say, “Well, those things have been around for a long time.”

Not to the magnitude presented by this psalm! In the day it was written, there were no weapons that could kill ten thousand people at a time. The kinds of pestilence it refers to had rarely been seen. One Hebrew commentary I read said the word for pestilence used in Psalm 91 refers to “a sudden pestilence or plague that comes in a moment without warning and causes such destruction that the world order is betrayed.” That’s a very fitting description of the chemical and biological warfare that is threatening our world today.

Such things are naturally terrifying to the human mind. Yet God said we should not be afraid of them because when they come, we can run to Him and He will be our refuge. A refuge can be defined as “that which provides shelter or protection from danger, distress or calamity; a stronghold which protects by its strength; a sanctuary which secures safety by its sacredness; any place inaccessible to the enemy.”

Doesn’t it comfort you to know you can live in a place that’s so secure, it’s inaccessible to your enemy?

Certainly that would include any human enemy. But what’s more important, it includes our real enemy—Satan. He is the one behind every evil terrorist plot. He is the one who’s come to kill, steal and destroy (John 10:10). But Psalm 91 tells us when we trust God as our refuge, the devil can’t touch us.

Just think, no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you can be in the place of refuge! You may be traveling on an airplane to another country, and all the while you’re surrounded by the protection of God. One commentary says that the person who takes refuge in the secret place of the Most High “will be enveloped by God’s providence so that he can continue to seek holiness and wisdom without fear of those who would seek to do him harm.”

I particularly like that phrase “enveloped by God’s providence” because it expresses the kind of comprehensive protection depicted again and again in Psalm 91. Verse 4, for example, says God will cover us with His feathers and under His wings will we trust and find refuge. If you’ve ever seen a mother hen gather her chicks under her wings, you know that she draws them so close to her and covers them so completely that they all but disappear beneath her outstretched wings.

That’s how thoroughly God takes care of us! He so covers us with His mighty, protective arms that no harm can even come near us.

God promised that kind of protection to His people under the Old Covenant and He promises it to us as His people under the New Covenant today.

The “A” of Abiding

As wonderful as God’s promises of protection are however, there is something you need to know about them. They don’t work automatically. We aren’t supernaturally protected from harm just because we’re born again.

There are some conditions we have to meet. They’re not complicated conditions though. In fact, you might say they’re as simple as A…B…C.

We find the first condition at the very beginning of Psalm 91 where it says, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” This verse makes it very clear that the person who will enjoy the protection of God is the one who abides in Him.

The abider is not the person who comes and goes in his relationship with God. He’s not the person who walks with God one day and rebels against Him the next. The one who abides is the person who endeavors to stay as close to God as possible all the time. He’s stable and fixed in his love for the Lord. He doesn’t obey God just when it’s convenient. He continually reverences God and purposes in his heart to do what He says all the time.

First John 3:6 puts it this way. “Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not….” Of course, that doesn’t mean the abider never makes mistakes or does anything wrong. We all miss it sometimes. We all have to repent at times, but the person who abides doesn’t live in habitual sin. Instead he is steadily seeking God and growing in the knowledge of Him.

In other scriptures, we find to abide means “to keep the teachings or the Word of the Lord” (John 15:10 and 1 John 2:27). Reading a couple of scriptures once a week in church won’t make us abiders. We need to be reading and thinking about the Word of God every day. The Word must be of paramount importance in our lives. If it is, we’ll find ourselves abiding in Him!

The “B” of Believing

Abiding in the Lord is a wonderful way to live. But to live in the fullness of His supernatural security we can’t stop there. We must also specifically believe and act on God’s guarantees of divine protection.

Believing is absolutely vital. Many dear, devoted saints who loved and abided in the Lord have still fallen victim to calamity simply because they didn’t know God had promised to deliver them from it. Because they didn’t know…they couldn’t believe—and because they couldn’t believe…they couldn’t receive the benefits of their covenant of protection.

Think of it this way. If someone were to deposit a million dollars in your bank account but you didn’t know anything about it, you wouldn’t be able to spend it. It would do you no good. That’s the situation many Christians are in today. God has promised to be their protector and their refuge but because they don’t know and believe it, His promises aren’t operating in their lives.

“That’s tragic!” you might say.

Yes it is. But it’s happening nonetheless because everything we receive from God we must receive by faith; and faith comes by hearing the Word of God. The new birth, for example, was available to us all many years before we were saved. But we couldn’t receive it until we heard, believed and acted on what the Word of God said about salvation.

The same thing is true with our protection. We must find out what the Word of God has to say about it and feed on that Word until faith arises and we believe it—not just with our head but with our heart.

To live in the secret place of God’s supernatural protection we must know what God has said He’ll do for us. We must also believe He is faithful and that what He said, He will do. The more we hear and read the scriptural promises of protection, the more assured we’ll be that it’s God’s will to keep us safe. The more we read about real people in the Bible who were supernaturally delivered—like the whole nation of Israel was from the hand of Pharoah—the more confident we’ll be in His ability to take care of us in dangerous times.

We’ll realize that God truly is our number one Source of protection. All other means of protection, helpful as they might be, are not fail-safe. Nothing in the natural realm can truly guarantee our protection. Only God can do that.

Then when we’re faced with a frightening situation, instead of caving in to fear, we just depend on God. Or as one Hebrew commentary says it, “If you put your faith in God, fear will be banished from your heart.”

That’s important because fear will connect you to the devil the way faith will connect you to God. You can’t be in fear and in faith at the same time. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t receive deliverance while living in fear because deliverance is received by faith. By believing the Word of God and trusting in Him, you open the way for Him to deliver you from any situation. His history with man fully proves He is well able to do it.

The “C” of Confessing

Once we’re abiding in the Lord and firmly believing His promises of protection, there’s something else we will do. We will begin to confess, or speak words that express our faith in God’s delivering power. We’ll be like the Psalm 91 man who doesn’t just believe with his heart, he opens his mouth and says of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust” (verse 2).

One commentary describes this man as a “devout man who declares publicly that God is his refuge from all physical dangers and his fortress protecting him from all human enemies.” He is one who is so outspoken where God is concerned that people understand who His God is and they know he believes Him to be his refuge in every time of trouble.

Don’t ever be ashamed in a time of calamity of crying out to God. Don’t be ashamed to say, “God, thank You for helping me.” Don’t start speaking unbelief when calamity comes. Stay on your faith and speak words of deliverance into that situation.

Don’t say, “I’m scared to death!” Instead go around saying things like “I trust in God. He is the source of my protection. He is my security. He is my refuge and fortress. There is a wall around me that the enemy cannot penetrate because my God is the Most High God. Satan, the killer, the destroyer cannot come into this fortress. I abide in the presence of God.”

I’ll be honest with you. That will be difficult (if not impossible) for you to do unless you have prepared in advance by filling your heart with the Word of God because the scriptural fact is that out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34).

So if you want to be secure in this life, you need to make a lifestyle of spending time in God’s Word. You need to do what Noah did in his day. He obeyed the Word of the Lord and built an ark to protect Himself and his family from the flood. And he did it before the rain began to fall.

In the same way, you need to build God’s promises of protection into your heart and life before trouble comes. You need to make it a daily habit to fellowship with Him, hearing and heeding the direction He gives to your heart. Then, when trouble does come, you’ll not only abide, believe and confess the Word of God, you’ll be able to hear the voice of God tell you what to do.

I heard the testimony of one woman who did exactly that and it saved her life and the life of many others on September 11 last year. She had made a habit of waking up every day and saying, “This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it!” She had a lifestyle of fellowshipping with the Lord, abiding in Him. She kept faith in her heart and in her mouth on a daily basis.

As I recall the story, her office was on an upper floor of the World Trade Center tower that was hit by the second plane the day of the terrorist attack. When the first tower was hit, the people in her office gathered together on another floor to await instructions. After a few minutes, a voice on the loudspeaker told them everything was safe and they should return to their offices.

As she headed toward the elevator to return to her floor, the Lord spoke to her heart and said, “Get out of this building as fast as you can and take as many people as possible with you!” Because she was accustomed to hearing and obeying the Lord, she instantly obeyed. As a result, many lives were saved that day.

That was a dangerous day…and there are more dangerous days ahead. We can be ready. We don’t have to wait until the moment of crisis to take our dependence off the world and put it on Him.

We can start now…abiding, believing and confessing. We can start building ourselves an ark today.