God Is Your Defender: Learning to Stand After Life Has Knocked You DownНамуна

The Ultimate Defender

To invite God to be our Defender, there are truths we must accept. Because I have my own sense of what punishment fits what crime, I have a very specific expectation of what God should do to show himself as my Defender in how he deals with those who have wronged me. But God isn’t just the upholder of righteousness and justice; he is righteousness itself. And he is the Judge, which means he gets to make the rules.

God hears us when we tell him of the hurts and wrongs we experience. It matters deeply to him. But when God is our Defender, it also means he is the Judge over the case. He’s the God who welcomed into paradise the criminal who hung on the cross next to Jesus, a man guilty of his crimes (see Luke 23:32–43). And he’s the God who struck down two early followers of the church, Ananias and Sapphira, for lying about how much profit from a land sale they had actually given to the church (see Acts 5:1–11). He gets to decide what punishment fits which crime—and he has his reasons. 

To call on God as your Defender is to release your idea of the appropriate penalty and lean into how he is going to deal with it.

Sometimes God’s defense of us is swift. Sometimes it is not, according to our perspective. It doesn’t mean he isn’t working behind the scenes to vindicate us. It was years before the person who abused me as a child was ultimately brought to justice. He was a fugitive for nine years, trying to avoid arrest. But when it did happen, it was swift. The punishment for his crime was more severe at this time, and I was able to testify in a much more powerful way than I would have been able to years earlier.

God understands our struggle with his timing and he includes our questions of “How long?” in his Word (see Psalm 13). He is big enough to wrestle with us over this question. And he has shown me something amazing along the way: the answer to this question is, "I am here."

God gave me a clear and specific vision that in the midst of some of the most horrible things that have happened to me, he was cradling me in his lap. Christ covered me with his robe, even though the situation around me was appalling. In that moment, he was already planning my vindication. 

If I want to embrace the righteousness and justice of God, I must at the same time embrace his timing for my defense, which might look far different from mine.

I am also thankful for God’s grace and mercy—giving us favor that we don’t deserve and withholding punishment that we do deserve. When I consider the years I lived in rebellion to his call to righteousness, and the ways I still fail, I see that his mercy is all that has stood between me and my own self-destructiveness. As a merciful Defender, God is about the business of saving people—even those we feel are in the wrong. I want to show others the kind of mercy I want to be shown. 

Respond

How do you feel when people seem to get away with evil?

How does your relationship with God affect your trust in his timing and his justice?

How do God’s grace and mercy affect the way you treat other people?