“But God”

Two of the most powerful words to be found in the Bible, and that you will ever encounter in life, two little words that are impossible to ignore or avoid, are But God. But God is a simple enough phrase, but it conveys something more powerful, more life-changing, and greater than our finite mind can fully grasp. Even if we can’t get our brain around what someone has described as the ‘bottom line’ statement of the whole Bible, I hope we can embrace it and believe it, and respond to it with our heart.The word but is one of the most common conjunctions in the English language. It appears after a statement has been made, a fact has been declared, and it might seem that whatever has been said is final, but, there is more, some additional information is needed, a contrasting truth needs to be presented and considered. The little word but can change the whole story; But God can change your whole life. In the Bible, But God stands as a fork in the road, a turning point, a line of demarcation between peril and rescue, chaos and control, fall and redemption.

The precise phrase, But God, appears just 43 times in the KJV, but a variation of the phrase, or other expressions of the same thought, are much more abundant. In the vast majority of occasions where we find the But God’s of the Bible, the passage follows a common flow: man or men have a problem, or have caused a problem, or they are the problem, and God appears, He enters the scene with a solution. Actually, God doesn’t just come along WITH a solution for our problems; He IS the solution for our problems.

As one of the But God’s from the Psalms says, He is our portion forever. And any time you see the words, But God, that is what is happening. People, because of the world, the flesh and the devil, get into a dilema, a life and death dilema, very often a ‘somebody’s eternity is at stake’ and ‘the world is hanging by a thread’ kind of dilema, and the Lord intervenes, and, like the pop Christian group Hillsong says, He is mighty to save. The whole of the saving Gospel of Christ is summed up by the simple truth of Romans 5.8: But God demonstrates His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.