The God that Stood in the Gap

The year is grinding to a close. We are just a few weeks from Christmas. I’ve been reading some humorous statements about the current situation with the global pandemic. Here are a few “Rewind 2019. Fast forward 2020.” “Our grandparents were called to war. We’re being asked to practice social distancing and stop hoarding toilet paper” (The PEI Collective).

Michael Hyatt wrote a book entitled Your Best Year Ever (A 5-step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals). A few of the comments about the book were, “This book can help you achieve more than you thought possible” (Andy Stanley, back cover). “Please take my advice and buy the book only if you want to be able to look back in twelve months and say, ‘Now that was my best year ever!” (John C. Maxwell). Quite frankly, I’m still hoping and searching. Can I get a witness?

This was a milestone year for me as I turned sixty. We ended up, on a regular basis, making the best decisions possible with the information available, at that time, with pure motives, and leaving the results up to God. One day I may share with you what I learned pre-COVID, amid COVID, and post-COVID. It has been an experience! That is an understatement! But, a time when I got closer to God, and God came closer to me.

What are we going to do with the year we never expected? Krista Horn wrote in an article entitled, “The God of My Gaps,” “Gaps abound and holes left damage but we serve a God of the gaps. There is not an answer to every problem, and sometimes the only way forward is to let go of current hopes and simply put one foot in front of the other and see where God leads. But even in the upending of dreams and the confusion of current circumstances, God is able to stand in the gap.”

“And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none” (Ezekiel 22:30).

“He may not provide the answers we seek and long for, but God stands in the gaps of our heartaches and defeatedness. He may not fill all the gaps with tangible solutions, but He fills them with Himself.”

A “gap” is an unfilled space or interval; a break of continuity. Similar words are pause, intermission, and interlude.

A gap is the space between two things or a hole in the middle of something solid.

The “gap year” promises a pause between the end of high school and the start of college.

“In the ancient world of the Bible, cities had walls surrounding them to provide protection from enemies. When the wall was breached, the city was vulnerable to destruction, the only way to secure it was for people to risk their lives by literally standing in the gap of the wall and fighting the enemy” (Karen Gonzales, World Relief).”

I am so thankful that God stood in my gaps!

These are the responses from a Facebook post when I asked my readers to provide a phrase or a word that symbolized and conceptualized 2020. Here’s some of the responses:

  • We never saw it coming, but He did. He’s got this
  • This too shall pass
  • Unexpected
  • Perseverance
  • That happened fast
  • Transition
  • Disruptive
  • God is sifting with us
  • Growth
  • Stuck
  • Grateful
  • Be strong in the Lord
  • Reset
  • “These are the times that try men’s souls”
  • Prophetic
  • Life changing
  • Unsettled
  • Jesus never changes
  • “When we can’t, God can”
  • Disorienting
  • The summer of our discontent
  • God is in Control
  • Uncharted
  • Chaos
  • Division
  • Challenging
  • Opportunity
  • Connection
  • Consecration
  • Awakening
  • Faithfullness
  • Confronting
  • Revival
  • Vision
  • 2 Timothy 1:7- A sound mind in a world bound by fear
  • Purposed
  • Pause with purpose
  • Change
  • Sovereignty

When the last day of 2020 comes, and the lights are switched off, and you drift into the new year, what will be your take-a-way of the old year?

~James Poitras, Director of Short-Term Missions
December 1, 2020