Be Encouraged Series

“Behold, I have engraved you upon the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me.” God says that he engraved us upon the palms of His hands. I want you to see this clearly. Have you ever needed to write down a phone number or a note and since you didn’t have any paper you wrote it on the palm of your hand? The information was so important to you that you wanted to ensure that you didn’t forget it so you wrote it in your palm. Once you did that you did not wash your hands until you got to some paper where you could transfer the information from your hand to the paper. Now imagine if you will that it would be a month before you got to some paper. How could you guarantee that the information would still be on your palm? Well, you could do it by “engraving” or tattooing the information on your palm. Then it would be permanent. This is the image that God gives us in these verses. God figuratively says He has inscribed or tattooed a picture of us on the palm of His hands. We are so important to Him that He has engraved our image in the palm of His hands if you will. Now let that sink in. Talk to anyone who has had a tattoo and it’s not a pleasant process. It hurts. And based on what I’ve read about hand tattoos – it is absolutely the most painful of them all. Some tattoo artists even encourage the person not to have them because of the pain involved. Now imagine our Father. He’s telling us that no matter how painful it may be, He is willing to go through it for us! He’s willing to go through it so He can always hold up His hands to see and remember us! WOW!

I want you to see something else. Earlier this week Nikki was looking at a picture of our grandbaby Zoe and was just smiling as she stared at the picture on her phone. If you saw it you could just see the love radiating from her face as she looked at that picture. Imagine God looking at His hands and seeing your face and smiling like that; smiling with a lot of love as He looks at your image. You have to love what Isaiah 62:3 and 4 says. It says, “You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” (Why? Because He is constantly looking at you! Now listen to this.) “It will no longer be said to you, Forsaken, nor to your land will it any longer be said, Desolate;” (As our nation and the world fights COVID-19, it may seem like we have been forsaken and are in a desolate place. But look at how our God sees us, His children.) “But you will be called, ‘My delight is in her,’ and your land, ‘Married.’ For the Lord delights in you, and to Him your land will be married.” Oh how I love this imagery. We are the Bride of Christ. And God says He delights in us and that He calls our land married. In other words, our land – everything about our lives – is married to Him, belongs to Him, and is protected by Him because He delights in us. New Light, God delights in us when we trust in Him!

Now look back at Isaiah 49:17. He said, “Your children shall make haste; your destroyers and they that made you waste shall go forth from you.” He said our children will hurry – they will go before us as a testament of God’s goodness and faithfulness to us. New Light, that’s a future that I can get behind! Because God has figuratively inscribed us on the palms of His hand, the last part of the verse says “your destroyers and they that made you waste shall go forth from you.” New Light, the Bible says that, because God has us tattooed on the palms of His hands, anything that has the potential to destroy us or devastate us will depart. Are you listening to what this is saying? God has given us a promise! Now I want to speak to you so you know where I stand with this. I firmly believe that when we put our complete faith and trust in Him, if we are infected by COVID-19, it will depart from us! I believe that’s a promise New Light. I read a story about a woman in her 90s who was at the nursing facility in Washington State where the virus spread and she was infected by it. She was at the facility recovering from a stroke and the facility went on lockdown a few days before she was due to be discharged. Because she was isolated from her family, one of the doctors read Scripture to her. When she got worse and they thought she would die they focused on making her as comfortable as possible. But God had other plans. She was healed. We should not be walking around in fear – we should be walking around in faith. Not being stupid, but faithful.