Our Preserver

One of the attributes of God is Preserver. He is our Preserver. He lovingly secures our salvation for eternity and maintains His gracious hold on our lives as we love and serve Him and others. Believers are firmly placed in His grip through faith. God safeguards His Word in our lives and He perpetuates our progressive sanctification through His Holy Spirit. We are preserved! We’re in His clutches, defended, conserved, kept, and in a sense frozen solid.

A January snowstorm can bring to mind the good, bad, and ugly of ice and snow. On the one hand, the beauty of new fallen snow in the sunlight is breathtaking. On the other hand, the treachery involved in traveling in the storm or being caught in icy conditions is often underestimated. Finally, there’s the dependence we have on keeping food stored longterm through the means of freezing. Freezing is a means of preserving. Meat is frozen, vegetables are frozen, medications are kept on ice, and the list goes on. And we are acquainted with the panic that happens when thawing happens unannounced by a power outage. We grow very concerned when preservation becomes compromised.

Scripture promises us that God’s preservation of us is without compromise. No power outages threaten us. There is no fear of melting away, no fear of slippage, no fear of being lost. He is our ultimate Preserver. In Him, we can have complete confidence.

God has put important things in place to preserve His children. Deuteronomy 6:24 (NKJV) says, “And the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is this day.” God preserves us through our obedience. Nehemiah 9:6 says, “You alone are the Lord; You have made the heavens, with all their host, The earth and everything on it, The seas and all that is in them, And You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You.” God preserves us through His Creation, the air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, the shelters that cover us. Psalm 16:1 says, “Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.” God preserves us through our ever-deepening trust in Him, enabled by His Holy Spirit. These truths are encouraging to me at the start of a new year – 2022…

Also, God preserves us through His protection. Psalm 32:7 says, “You are my hiding place; You shall preserve me from trouble; You shall surround me with songs of deliverance.” Psalm 121:7,8 says, “The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.” Psalm 140:4 says, “Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men, who have purposed to make my steps stumble.” 2 Timothy 4:18 says, “And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen!”

As God’s imagebearers, and as we mature in our faith, we begin to reflect God’s preserving characteristics in our own lives – His righteousness, His truthfulness, His fairness, His sincerity. Psalm 25:21 says, “Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, For I wait for You.” He involves us in His plans to reconcile and restore. Isaiah 49:8a says, “Thus says the Lord: ‘In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you; I will preserve you and give you as a covenant to the people, to restore the earth…’ ”

Most importantly, God gave us His Son to preserve us eternally. In Jesus Christ, we experience the gift of salvation and understand that by losing our lives in submission to Him, that our lives become preserved forever. We are secured. We are protected. We are delivered from slavery to sin. We are reflectors of His grace because we have first experienced it in Him. We are sealed. We are forever part of His Kingdom.

Luke 17:33 says, “Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” A great promise for 2022!