In a dark place?

 

In the past few days, my husband’s injury topped by a rare bout with a common cold makes him seem like a different person. He feels weak and has pain keeping him away from normal activities. I have felt numbed by it, feeling alone, almost as if abandoned. Yesterday, the Lord lifted me out of that deep hole and restored my trust in Him. Today, through seeing a grave error in thinking in another person, and through four devotional readings, He gives me a deeper understanding of human fragility and of how much all of us need Jesus.

The first reading was the folly of thinking I will never fail. Even though experience says we fail and all Christians agree that temptation sometimes wins, this week I confessed something to a small group and they would not let me call it sin. They defined it so the matter was God’s will rather than my disobedience. I wanted assurance, not that!

The reading said that failure/sin ought not happen but we must deal with facts, not theories. The Bible does not say sin is impossible, only that Jesus Christ saves us from it being a necessity. The writer says faith in Christ does not make it impossible to sin; only that sin ceases to be our only choice. Therefore, continual victory is available to us. This is not about theory but our experience. As the NT says:

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8–10)

The second devotional was written many years ago by one of God’s children. It says:

I have to confess tonight with deep humility of soul before God that I am a poor miserable sinner in His sight! The question I asked myself last night revealed to me the unbelief and rebellion of my heart. I found that I could not trust Jesus unconditionally for the future; and further and worse, that I was cherishing hard thoughts of Him because He did not bless me as I desired! I have passed a day of intense wretchedness. I seemed to lose my hold of everything, and to be cut adrift upon a fearful sea of unbelief and sin.
I doubted Jesus and nothing else was of any account. None of my past experience seemed worth anything, and Satan urged me to throw the whole thing up, and to turn to the world for that satisfaction which he tried to persuade me I had not found in Christ. So dreadful a thing is the slightest unbelief! But my faithful Savior would not let the Devil carry off one of His sheep like that, and He has delivered me from his snare. —Journal, May 11, 1868

Earlier this week, those could have been my words and today, I can joyfully add the last sentence. The struggle to have faith in the unseen future when it threatens to grow bleak and darker still happens — a battle common to all who trust in Christ. It may not be expressed but the enemy often throws our hearts into a deep hole.

The third reading speaks of a boy on a bicycle pedaling up a hill against the wind. Then a trolley car came along going the same direction. The lad laid hold of the bar at the back end of the car and his efforts ceased as the trolly carried him easily.

The author of this reading had been in a time of weariness and weakness, almost worn out by the circumstances of life. This scene put in mind the available strength of Jesus Christ and how only “reaching out and grasping Him in faith was enough to make His power mine” was all that was needed to dismiss his weariness. The assurance is this:

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you… was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. (2 Corinthians 1:19–22)

PRAY: God, most often the words I hear from You are, “I am here, with you.” How awful the sin of forgetting this truth and dropping into a dark place. Why do that? It is the way of the world (read the newspapers) and the way of the flesh (I can do this myself) and the lie of the devil (God does not want the best for you) and all three shout it. No excuses; Your whisper is louder, longer, true and sustaining. Praise Your name for holding on to me, no matter how foolish my thoughts and sinful reactions to the trials of life. Your faithfulness is most precious.