Hallelujah! The sun is shining today in the Chicago area providing a much needed brightening of the dreary winter environs. It is small wonder that January is an especially difficult month to navigate emotion-wise for those living in sun-deprived geographical areas. It is days like today that give authentic relevancy to the expression, “Drink in the sunshine.” Dark days—literally and figuratively--can not only affect our emotions negatively, they can mess with our faith. When life is messy, I come unglued; when my faith is messed up, I come unhinged. Worse, faith that is off-center or off-course, tends to make life messy as well—one can quickly find oneself unglued and unhinged at the same time.
When our faith falters, the door to our house falls ajar, allowing all sorts of riff-raff to come in; our vulnerability to the effects of outside weather conditions increases greatly.We instinctively know from experience or our inherent sense of self-preservation that the best fix is to close the door. Unfortunately, there are times it takes more strength than we have or can muster for the task. We want to hide or go to sleep and come out to find the door re-secured, the debris cleared out, and our house put back in order. The hope-filled part--it gets there; the hard-to-swallow part--but not necessarily in the way or time we desire or envision.
Sometimes we are overwhelmed and wait a long time before we decide or are able to take action. We feel the weight of responsibility to fix the problem, the burden of guilt for the condition in which we find ourselves, and the pressure of real or imagined disappointment—ours God-ward or God’s us-ward—all of the above fueled by lies of the enemy. The worst part is the loss of hope accrued that anything will change or help.
I have found myself in this prison of unbelief and lost faith. Outside it is dark, and inside darker still. Yet…never has the pit been too deep or the darkness so thick that God could not reach me. Words of hope, glimmers of light, may seem to bounce off impenetrable walls of discouragement and hard-hearted or hard headed-ness, but let God be true and every man a liar. Each one of us faces dark days, sun-shine not withstanding. While I am bogged down in a morass of ugliness, unable to move, the Holy Spirit is hovering over my life that at the moment appears and feels to be as “without form and void” as the earth was in the beginning. Then God spoke, and life came forth. God’s way, power, and authority remain the same. He speaks and we live. There is one way, one truth, one life--accessed by faith.
We can say “IDK” or “I don’t care” or “whatever” or “it doesn’t matter.” But God knows, He cares, He has the last word on “whatever” and every detail of our lives matters to Him. We can speak the truth, although we might feel the lies. We can choose to believe, though the doubts persist. God Himself is our “break through” the darkness. Our faith may falter, but His never fails and He has promised we are safe in His hands.
“I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.” Ps. 27:13-14
No comments:
Post a Comment