This post is part of a series of weekly devotionals and discounts during the world-wide CoViD-19 pandemic. In wondering how I could offer relief in some small way, I thought about combining a weekly entry from a devotional I wrote several years ago and a 50% discount on one of my fiction books to offer a ray of hope. Sign up to receive each post into your mailbox every Wednesday morning.

Hebrews tells us “we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure…” That hope has a name, Jesus Christ and the testimony about him and his rescue found in the Bible. May you rest in him during these scary, frustrating times…

When I was about six years old, I nearly drowned.

One summer, my family visited my grandparents who were camping along the lakeshore in northern Michigan. After feasting on buckets of KFC chicken and mashed potatoes, we went for a stroll on the beach. We took off our shoes to dip in along the periphery of the lake, and apparently I got a little too close.

I vaguely remember one minute splashing in a puddle of water after a wave receded. The next moment I was splashing, gasping for breath, and choking on a mouthful of lake water a few feet out.

My dad took quick action before the situation got any worse. He dragged me to the shore and helped me catch my breath. He rescued me from drowning, from dying.

Maybe you haven’t had as obvious of a rescue experience, but if you are in Christ you are a rescued person. God has done so once and for all, and he continues to do so at life’s ever turn.

King David says that God is a mighty God who rescues us over and over again. Matthew says God is like a shepherd who gives all it takes to rescue the one lost sheep. Zechariah declares that through his Son, God has rescued us from powerful enemies. John writes this Son was sent not to shake his finger at the world, but to extend the helping hand of rescue. And Paul tells us God has rescued us from one dark and evil realm, and brought us into an entirely different realm—the kingdom of the Son he loves.

God saved us through the cross, and continues to save his children when the undercurrents of life try to drag us down.

In Christ, you are rescued!

Our God is a mighty God who saves us over and over!
For the Lord, Yahweh, rescues us
From the ways of death many times.
Psalm 68:20 tpt

“Look at it this way. If someone has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders off, doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine and go after the one? And if he finds it, doesn’t he make far more over it than over the ninety-nine who stay put? Your Father in heaven feels the same way. He doesn’t want to lose even one of these simple believers.”
Matthew 18:12–14 msg

“He has rescued us from the power of our enemies!
This fulfills the sacred oath he made with our father Abraham. Now we can boldly worship God with holy lives,
Living in purity as priests in his presence every day!”
Luke 1:73–75 tpt

“God did not send his Son into the world to judge and condemn the world, but to be its Savior and rescue it!”
John 3:17 tpt

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. Jesus gave his life for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live.
Galatians 1:3–4 nlt

He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves.
Colossians 1:13 hcsb