Trusting in Hard Times
Are you surprised when things are difficult?
Verse of Day
‘When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. For I am the Lord , your God
Isaiah 43:2-3
Today’s Devotional
I hate spiders. I really, really hate them. The other day, I was at my office working alone and I happened to look up from my desk. In the hall right in front of my door was a huge spider. I immediately went into fight-or-flight mode. The problem was that my instinct was “flight”, but the spider was directly blocking the only path out. So I had to fight. (And I won. But barely.) Do you know what would have made that whole situation less scary? If I would not have been alone.
This verse tells me that I never go through hard things alone. But in the moment, that is difficult for me to remember. This verse does not say “if”, it says “when”. But I am so human that I am still caught off guard when things are difficult.
I don’t generally refer to my troubles as deep waters, rivers of difficulty, or fire of oppression. But somehow those descriptions fit. There have been times in my life that felt so deep that I wasn’t sure if I would ever surface. There have been times when the current of my troubles was moving so fast that I thought I would be swept away. There have been times of oppression that might as well have been actual fire for the way they affected me at the time.
But look back at the verse. He is with you. You will not drown in your troubles. You will not burn up or be consumed by the difficult times in your life. Why? Because He is God and He loves you. He sees the bigger picture. We do not and cannot.
God can see that difficulties drive us to Him, teach us valuable lessons, and lead us to healing if we will allow it.
When my daughter was finishing the 5th grade, she came down with pneumonia. After having an unexplained fever for a few days, thinking it was just a little virus that would run its course, we went to the doctor. After some chest x-rays, we discovered that she had pneumonia in both lungs. The cure was an oral antibiotic for 10 days, and two really big shots, one in each cheek of her derriere. The nurses warned us both that these shots would be painful. I held her hands while the nurses gave her both shots at the same time. It was bad. Really bad. She cried for a long time. And this child was not a big crier. She hardly even flinched when she got other shots. For days afterward, she had to lay on her tummy because her backside was so sore.
Now imagine if she could not have heard the conversations with the doctors and the nurses. Imagine that she had no idea what was going on. What if all she knew was that she did not feel great, which led to a place of some embarrassment of parts of her being exposed, and some big pain that lingered for days? Imagine how scary and confusing it would be to have no idea that the pain we are going through is actually for our benefit and healing?
That’s exactly the kind of situation we find ourselves in. We don’t know what is going on or why.
But here’s what we need to trust in. There is a purpose for our difficulties. And God is with us during every single moment of it. He is in the room holding our hand during the pain. He won’t let us drown, be swept away, or burned up. He will not leave us. He will use our difficulties to bring us close, teach us valuable lessons, and heal us. If we let Him. Do we trust Him enough to lean on Him during our hard times? Or do we get mad and walk away?
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
How do you know that God is with you? Do you trust that He is with you during difficult seasons? How has He used hard things in the past to bring healing, teach you lessons, and pull you close? How can you trust Him enough today to know that He will never leave you?
Comments
Great stuff. Keep up the good work.