I Have Your Back

I have your back. 

Have you ever told someone you had their back?

Has anyone ever told you that he or she had your back?

This phrase, “I have your back,” expresses a pledge to be there for a person not only in good times but most definitely in challenging situations, when the attacks are coming.

You see it’s easy to say these words during the peaceful, calm days of life, but it’s much more difficult to live them on the battlefield where arrows and bullets fly ever so close.

We read in the gospels where Peter pretty much expressed to Jesus that he had his back.

After Jesus and his disciples shared their last Passover meal together and were making their way up the Mount of Olives to the garden of Gethsemane, Peter pledges to Jesus, “I will never fall away…Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!”

Those words said with much determined commitment in the cool of the night on the way to a prayer garden, quickly became meaningless when the Roman soldiers showed up in force and arrested Jesus.

I’m sure you can name people in your life you thought you could count on, but they abandoned you in a time of need.   They failed to have your back.

If we’re honest, isn’t it hard to believe that anyone really has our back?

In fact, I’m realizing to believe that someone will have my back in challenging times points to a deep level of trust -- A trust that has been developed over years of walking together through valleys and over mountains.

For me, that list of people is not very long.  In addition to my wife, I can only name a couple of other dear friends who have proven in the past they’ve had my back and I trust them to have it in the future.

In the Bible, we see where the Apostle Paul speaks with confidence to God having his back.  In Romans 8, he lists all of life’s battlefield challenges and then concludes that there is nothing that will separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

While I want to develop other “I have your back” friendships; more importantly, I want to grow in my trust of God to have my back no matter who else stands with me.  

Do you believe God has your back?

Would you live differently today if you truly believed God had your back?