16As for me, I will call upon God, And the Lord shall save me.17Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, And He shall hear my voice.18He has redeemed my soul in peace from the battle that was against me, For there were many against me.
Now, to verse 22, which gives us more practical action:22Cast your burden on the Lord, And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.
The power of the indwelling Spirit of God and the superior activity of God's truth working in our souls can release righteousness and help us to reject that devices of the enemy, who would want to render us unproductive in our walk with Christ. We have to identify and strengthen those vulnerable areas, and as Hebrews 12 says, to lay aside every weight, so that we can experience the power of the Holy Spirit working mightily in us.
In 2nd Corinthians 12, the apostle Paul is writing about dealing with a physical weakness, but I believe he expands the discussion to a variety of vulnerable areas for us, reminding us that we need Christ's strength:
9And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.10Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
For instance, are you familiar with an app called Snapchat? According to Bloomberg Business Week, it allows users to send text messages, pictures, and videos that self-destruct just seconds after being received. The messages can’t be stored on incoming phones or devices and are erased from Snapchat’s off-site servers immediately. The premise is that there’s no potentially incriminating or embarrassing evidence left behind for snoopy spouses or anyone else looking to peruse your selfies or texts. Of course, there are reports that these "deleted" items really are not completely erased. It's an app for parents to be concerned about, when you consider the history and its purported use.
Yahoo! Finance reports that Evan Spiegel and his Stanford fraternity buddies reportedly invented Snapchat as a way to “sext” co-eds with impunity but the app has since expanded well beyond naughty college kids. According to the company, Snapchat processed 350 million messages last September, up about six-fold from the prior February. Last fall Spiegel reportedly turned down as much as $3 billion from Facebook and $4 billion from Google. The basis of the offers was Snapchat’s coolness with the kids and potential for grown-ups.
Yahoo! Finance reports that Evan Spiegel and his Stanford fraternity buddies reportedly invented Snapchat as a way to “sext” co-eds with impunity but the app has since expanded well beyond naughty college kids. According to the company, Snapchat processed 350 million messages last September, up about six-fold from the prior February. Last fall Spiegel reportedly turned down as much as $3 billion from Facebook and $4 billion from Google. The basis of the offers was Snapchat’s coolness with the kids and potential for grown-ups.
This week, Bloomberg Business Week reports that an anonymous hacker published a database on SnapchatDB.info containing millions of usernames and their corresponding phone numbers, and the leaked information quickly ricocheted across the Web. The situation comes as little surprise to anyone who has been following the company. For months, security experts at an Australian outfit called Gibson Security have been warning about Snapchat’s vulnerabilities. Here’s a nugget from a report published in August:
“Using our Snapchat API implementation, someone could save media sent to them … and as we recently found, build a database of Snapchat usernames and phone numbers, connecting names to aliases easily, and with further work connecting social media accounts to entries.”
In recent days, executives at Gibson Security have hastened to note that they were not involved in the leak. “We know nothing about SnapchatDB, but it was a matter of time til something like that happened,” the company wrote on Twitter.
So far Snapchat’s founders, as is their custom, have taken a subdued approach in responding to the warnings. “Over the past year we’ve implemented various safeguards,” the company posted on its website last week. “We recently added additional counter-measures and continue to make improvements to combat spam and abuse.”
This, of course, comes on the heels of stolen information from Target credit card customers during the Christmas shopping season. Fox News says that customer names, credit and debit card numbers, card expiration dates, encrypted PINs, and the embedded code on the magnetic strip on back of the cards were stolen from about 40 million credit and debit cards used at Target between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15.
These instances can serve to teach us valuable lessons about the use of communication technology, and about our own spiritual lives. In the tech world, we have to admit that we have to be aware that what we think is private may not necessarily be private. Even though an app like Snapchat may promise privacy to an extent, the content, and now user information may not be as private as one might assume. Of course, we have the ongoing concerns about social media, such as Facebook, and information shared on Google. Plus, there's the vulnerability we have for credit and debit card information being stolen. So, we have to take precautions and not draw conclusions that information is safe when it is not.
Now, let's talk a moment about vulnerability from a spiritual standpoint. We have to make sure that we identify vulnerable areas where we may be opening ourselves up to the one who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. The power of indwelling sin can cause us to be less-than-productive in our Christian life and short-circuit the work of the Spirit to produce the fruit that God would intend - this can cause great frustration and a lack of joy and freedom in our spiritual walk.
Once we identify those areas of weakness, then we can take the necessary steps to strengthen ourselves using the resources of Christ. Paul said that where he was weak, the Lord would be strong. When and where we encounter insecurity in our lives, we can depend on the power of the indwelling Christ and the transformational nature of the Word of God to build us up in our faith and enable us to be triumphant in those areas that are problematic for us.
This, of course, comes on the heels of stolen information from Target credit card customers during the Christmas shopping season. Fox News says that customer names, credit and debit card numbers, card expiration dates, encrypted PINs, and the embedded code on the magnetic strip on back of the cards were stolen from about 40 million credit and debit cards used at Target between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15.
These instances can serve to teach us valuable lessons about the use of communication technology, and about our own spiritual lives. In the tech world, we have to admit that we have to be aware that what we think is private may not necessarily be private. Even though an app like Snapchat may promise privacy to an extent, the content, and now user information may not be as private as one might assume. Of course, we have the ongoing concerns about social media, such as Facebook, and information shared on Google. Plus, there's the vulnerability we have for credit and debit card information being stolen. So, we have to take precautions and not draw conclusions that information is safe when it is not.
Now, let's talk a moment about vulnerability from a spiritual standpoint. We have to make sure that we identify vulnerable areas where we may be opening ourselves up to the one who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. The power of indwelling sin can cause us to be less-than-productive in our Christian life and short-circuit the work of the Spirit to produce the fruit that God would intend - this can cause great frustration and a lack of joy and freedom in our spiritual walk.
Once we identify those areas of weakness, then we can take the necessary steps to strengthen ourselves using the resources of Christ. Paul said that where he was weak, the Lord would be strong. When and where we encounter insecurity in our lives, we can depend on the power of the indwelling Christ and the transformational nature of the Word of God to build us up in our faith and enable us to be triumphant in those areas that are problematic for us.
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