“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.” (Proverbs 18:10)

I am not someone who likes to do “actions“ with songs in church, and this proverb is the chorus of a song (“Blessed be the name of the Lord“ by Clinton Utterbach) that is often used (in the UK at least) to get a congregation – particularly children – engaged in praise. Personally, I like to think about the words as I’m singing them, and I can’t do that if I’m running on the spot and waving my arms about, but I guess that’s just me. And there’s actually some great stuff to think about here.

The lyrics of the chorus are slightly different from the proverb. The lyrics are “the righteous run into it and they are saved,“ but the proverb tells us that the righteous run into it and are safe. It’s the word “safe” that struck me when I looked it up. It doesn’t just mean in a place of safety, nor is it specifically just “rescued.” The Hebrew word śāḡaḇ means “too high for capture.” The place of safety isn’t created by the walls, but by the elevation. The person who runs into this strong tower is lifted to a place that is inaccessible to the enemy. And if we know Ephesians 2:6 we know that the place where we have been raised up to is together with Christ in heavenly places. When we are raised up in the spirit, we are inaccessible to the enemy.

I have also just been reading the prayer of Jabez, which is in 1 Chronicles 4:10. He prayed “Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!“ When we pray the Lord‘s prayer, we also ask Him to deliver us from evil. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought of this in terms of keeping me safe so that evil things don’t happen to me. Jabez isn’t praying selfishly here: he turns it round to say “keep me safe from evil so that I don’t bring it upon anybody else.” If we bring this reflection to our safety in the name of the Lord, we get an added dimension to the proverb: when we run to the place of safety, the people around us are also protected from any pain that the enemy would seek to cause through us.

So how do we run into the name of the Lord? As I have said elsewhere, (and not just me of course!) to be “in the name” of Jesus isn’t just about a position of faith, but it’s about where we are putting our feet in actuality. The name of the Lord isn’t just what we call him, but it’s who He is, and to be in His name we have to be true to Him. If we have spent the day following our own selfish desires we can hardly expect to pray “in the name of Jesus” at the end of it, because we haven’t been in His strong tower; we have walked after the flesh and not after the spirit, by sight and not by faith. It’s the righteous who run into the strong tower: righteousness is only ours by faith, and “all that is not of faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23).

So when we are walking by faith we are lifted into the heavenly tower of the name of Jesus, out of reach of the enemy who has no access to our spirits, and a blessing, not a danger, to those around us.  Where are you today? Are you up in His strong tower? If not, start running, before anybody gets hurt.