Day 22: I Will Be Your God

Posted on: March 30, 2025
by: Gerrit Dawson, Senior Pastor

WEEK FOUR
I WILL BE YOUR GOD

Daniel Gerhartz. In the Shadow of Your Wings. Contemporary.

Last week, we considered God’s promise to dwell with us as the central strand around which his dealings with us are woven. Actually, this shimmering truth is most often shown to us as a double promise. From Genesis to Revelation, the triune LORD I AM pledges, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” The God who comes to dwell with us and within us has bound himself to us.

Here we bring in the essential Biblical idea of covenant. We will see this week how the LORD makes promises toward us and has an expectation that we will reply. We will return his covenant loyalty with our trust in him and our faithfulness to the commands in his Word. We will believe, worship and obey, not to gain his favor, but to respond to the grace he has already given us in Christ.

This is a claiming, gathering and keeping kind of love. God’s covenant promises indicate that he is Father to his children, brother to humanity in Jesus, friend to those who trust and obey him, king over those who shelter in his realm, and guarantor of eternal life to come.

In this week’s painting, Daniel Gerhartz imagines a woman taking shelter in the warm, surrounding feathers of God’s presence. “In the Shadow of Your Wings” finds inspiration in several psalms that compare the LORD’s intimate, protecting love to a mother bird’s enfolding wings.

In Psalm 61:4, David prays, “Let me dwell in your tent forever. Let me find refuge in the shelter of your wings.” Such a plea leans into the reality that we belong to our God, and he has committed himself irrevocably to us. As a people and as unique individuals, our Father relates to us as his family. Like a mother bird sheltering her chicks, he surrounds us with protective warmth of his everlasting presence.

In Psalm 63:7, David finds that joy rises from realizing such a relationship with his creator. “In the shadow of your wings, I will sing for joy.” When we know that we belong to God always and forever, we can sing even in the most difficult circumstances. Because nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38).

As we meditate this week on the triune God’s covenant commitment, may you feel the feathery warmth of his wings around you.

COVENANT PROMISES TO ABRAHAM

Every day, pray aloud worshipfully this golden thread that weaves through the entire tapestry of God’s intent for us.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD,

when I will make a new covenant with the

house of Israel. . . .

I will put my law within them,

and I will write it on their hearts.

And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

They shall all know me, from the least of them

to the greatest. . . .

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will

remember their sin no more.

(Jeremiah 31:31, 33-34)

Daily Scripture

Genesis 17:1-8

When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

Picking Up the Thread

Abram and Sarai had waited twenty-five years for the LORD to keep his promise to make this childless couple forebearers of a great nation to bless the world. They weren’t getting any younger. We read later, with classic Biblical understatement, that at ninety “the way of women had ceased to be with Sarah” (Genesis 18:11). However, once more the LORD appeared to Abram calling for his faith. This time God used the language of a covenant, a solemn agreement that bound a ruler and his people together. In those days, a king would set the terms of the covenant for both parties, making his pledge of protection over a people and declaring what he would expect in return. Here, the LORD even changes Abram’s name to reflect the promise. Abraham means “father of a multitude,” and this new name signifies that God’s pledge is not a conditional or temporary covenant but an

everlasting one.

The most meaningful part of this pledge was not the land or the offspring, but the relationship: “to be God to you” (Genesis 17:7). Ever after, the LORD promised Abraham’s descendants, “I will be their God.” The Creator of all things covenanted to be in particular relationship. All of his divine attributes would be inclined toward the children of Abraham. His ears would always be open to them, and his protective power would always be over them. Though they would go through trials, their God, this true God, this covenanting God, would go with them. The LORD I AM, the sovereign King of kings would take these people as his own.

Stitching It In

One way to understand the significance of this covenant is to reflect on how the LORD would state it decades later to Abraham’s grandson Jacob: “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Genesis 28:15). When we enter this covenant with God, we are never alone. We can turn to God and find him there, listening, caring and answering. Our lives are never out of his control; he never loses his grip on us. Our days are never meaningless because we have been taken into the center of God’s very purpose for his people.

This golden thread, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” gives us a great sense of belonging. It’s the underlying bond in all our relationships, the deep connection for which we yearn. So many memories of the profound ties I have had come to me:

Watching the moon rise over the ocean after we’d talked for hours, we clinked glasses and each declared, “I’ve never had a friend like you.”

Making a deal with my aging terrier, I said to her, “I know you’ll stay with me as long as you can, even when you don’t feel well, because you’re my loyal dog. And I’m the one who cares for you. So, I won’t let you suffer. You don’t ever have to worry about that.”

Playing hide and seek with my little son, I searched for him crying, “I’ve lost my boy! Where’s my little boy? I need my boy!” He couldn’t wait to be found but ran out assuring me, “Me here! Me here!”

Bopping along to an old pop tune, I sang “Hey, hey baby, I wanna know-o-o, will you be my girl?” Instantly my little daughter ran from her room with outstretched arms, “I’ll be your girl, Daddy!”

Looking at a photo of this beautiful woman in a flowing wedding dress, smiling up the aisle toward me, I felt the wonder in the old Temptations song, “Out of all the fellas in the world, she belongs to me!”

Roll all these into one and multiply by eternity, and we get some idea of what it means that God pledges himself to us forever proclaiming, “I will be your God and you will be my people.”

This is what undergirds us for the long haul of life in the world. Abraham was called to huge faith and long endurance as the fulfillment of the promise took decades. Yet every step along the way, he relied on the intimacy of God’s covenant love.

Praying Along the Pattern

I can see so little of what’s coming ahead,

So I find it hard to trust your promises.

Will you really not leave me when

The weakness comes, the skills slip,

The pain overwhelms, the losses mount?

Are you really working all things together for good

Even through the accident, the diagnosis, the failure?

Will I have faith when it comes to the crunch time?

O gracious Father, the future is such an unknown,

But I can look back and see your hand.

You have not spared any of your children