This week my thoughts have been on Psalm 90:10, which in the King James Version states: “The days of our years are threescore years and then; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” When I read it in a recent translation, I was horrified!
The Message Bible, from which I have enjoyed many paraphrased thoughts, renders it “We live for seventy years or so (with luck we might make it to eighty)”. What has luck got to do with it? And what has luck got to do with a Christian anyway? The author of the Message Bible actually uses the word “luck” 30 times, and I would have to agree it is a common word in today’s society. However, let me come right out and say, “There is no such thing as luck to a Christian!”
You might say a person is lucky because they won money at the race track, but it may not have just been by chance. Perhaps they had studied the form of the horse or the winning record of the jockey. You might be more accurate if you said a person was lucky because they got a few dollars from a lottery ticket. Someone said that lotteries are a tax on people who failed math! Yet even the lottery is not all chance; there are principles in play and if the lottery runs for a few thousand years every combination will have its turn.
God is not a God of chance, of capriciousness. God works within the principles He has laid down. You mix one part of hydrogen and two parts of oxygen and you’ll get water every time — it’s a principle. Give and you will receive — it’s a principle. Believe and confess Jesus as Lord and you will be saved — it’s a principle. Take any statement of God addressed to you, and it will work when you fulfill the conditions it specifies. So it is not a case of it might be your turn next Sunday to get a healing, or your turn to get a vinyard you didn’t plant — believe God daily and daily He will meet your need!
And by the way, I believe in the interpretation given in the Amplified Bible about Psalm 90:10. It is not a general rule for humanity but a statement about the curse of every Israelite aged 20 or over when they rebelled against God at Kadesh-barnea. Moses himself lived to 120 years.
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