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Do Not Despair: God Is With You – Even Though It’s Dark

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Published on: August 8, 2017

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” -Proverbs 13:12

How true that is.  I remember watching the story of a man who had been wrongly imprisoned. While he was in his cell, he came across an inscription that had been written on the stone wall of his cell that said, “God will give me justice.”

The story then went on to show how as the years rolled by for this man in prison, that he would take up his own rock, from the floor of his dank prison cell and continuously etch out the inscription himself.

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That same saying, “God will give me justice,” he carved over and over so many times, that it became etched very deep on the stone walls of the prison.

As the years passed by and his suffering continued, he began to loose heart and despair, until finally it showed a picture of him sitting on the floor with the rock in his hand looking at the inscription in a complete state of hopelessness.

This time, instead of picking up the rock and continuing to write on the inscription as he had done for years, he dropped the rock from his hands, as if God had forgotten all about him.

The irony or miracle rather of the whole thing, was that God did give him justice because He made a way for this man to escape from his prison cell and those who had falsely accused him received justice in the end for their wrong doing.

The thing to note here is that before this all played out, he had his moment of utter despair and a complete feeling like God had turned His back on him.

He was hopeless.

Some of you have felt that way before, like God turned His back on you.

Some of you have relentlessly tried to beat down a wall in front of you to a point where you simply slid down the side of it and shrunk down in despair.

Then, there are those who barely take a stab at something, possessing little to no faith, who try to do it for a short time; and when they run into any obstacles, they quit, give up and do something else.

Still, there are those who possess great faith in their God and the courage, by His grace and strength, to do a work for Christ who, when they run into obstacles, realize that they’re bound to come and still persevere with their faith strong in God anyway.

No one ever did anything in this life because it was easy to do.

I saw a quote once that read, “A pathway without obstacles probably leads nowhere.”

No one ever broke through to the other side of things because they stopped and felt sorry for themselves half way through it, or when they ran into a little opposition.

There does come a point though where sometimes God will allow you to shrink down into the valley of despair and you may not even really know why.

Just asked Job.

God allowed Job to be tried in the extreme.

However, remember, his latter end was more blessed than his beginning (Job 42:12), and Job was faithful to His God through it all.

If you’re going through a hard time in your life right now where you feel like giving up, or turning your back on God, I don’t believe you are reading this article by coincidence.

We must hold fast to Jesus and believe that God will deliver us from whatever it is we are going through.

Now, I’m not talking about bad choices you have made and now you’re living with the consequences; but if you are really struggling and God is testing your faith, you need to break through in prayer and faith till you get to the other side.

God does not often work in a manner that’s fitting with our schedule of how we think things should work out. It’s not usually that you say a prayer and 30 seconds later it’s answered.

God does not say ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you if He didn’t want you to know that all those steps were going to be part of the process (Matthew 7:7-8).

Just make sure that you are asking according to God’s will and are being led of the Spirit as you pray.

“Lord, I would sure love this brand new Lamborghini” is probably not high on God’s priority list to give you (James 4:3).

No, when we asked according to God’s will and it’s what He desires for our lives, He will bring the pieces together.

Do not despair today, for the Lord hears the prayer of the righteous.

Yet, He is also far from the wicked (Proverbs 15:29).

Make sure that you have no unrepented sin in your life and ask God to give you the grace and strength to endure whatever it is that you are facing.

As He said in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “…My grace is sufficient for thee…”

I’m not going to give you the “everything is going to be wonderful” line because it may not always be wonderful or even turn out wonderful in your eyes, but we do know that “…all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

If you can’t trust in anything else, simply trust in the Word of God and His son Jesus Christ, for He will always lead you through whatever you face.

 

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