Fight With a Four-Letter Word

I woke up with a four-letter word on my mind.

Intrigued, soon the first sip of morning coffee found me typing it into the Dictionary app on my phone to find the definition.

.

The word “stet” followed by a row of dots means “let it stand”, and it is written as a corrective direction on a manuscript or written material of some sort to keep a portion of the same that had earlier been marked for deletion.

I love that! ...maybe because I know the pain of submitting a written work to an editor and receiving it back covered in red ink. There are passages deleted, words changed and sentences rearranged, all in the hope of making the message more concise and to the point. No matter how pure the editor's intent, however, there is something inside of me that rises up in rebellion and makes me want to fight at the sight of all that red!

Maybe that's not a bad thing, but a God-planted defense mechanism for those times when we're under attack. The Bible tells us that God has plans for our lives, story-lines for each of us, written before we were even born. Those plans and thoughts are for our prosperity and well being, filled with hope and a bright future. But the devil also has a plan ...of attack! ...and the Word says that he comes to kill, steal and destroy all that which God meant for our good.

So the manuscripts of our lives can suddenly be handed back to us one day with large passages of the same marked out in red ink. Things we thought were in our future, plans we cherished, joys we were anticipating... all can seem suddenly to have been removed from our story by the one who robs our joy.

In our affliction, we appeal to a Higher Authority. And how does God respond? He writes “stet...” beside those passages the devil wanted to delete. “Let it stand” He writes beside the joys and life experiences the enemy meant to steal away.

And what makes the red-letter promises of God in the Bible more powerful than the red-ink editions of the devil? God's are written in the Blood of His Son.

“So you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you...I will fulfill the number of your days.”

(Exodus 23:25-26 NKJV)