Steadfast

If you are hurting, if you are confused, if you feel rejected, please take a few minutes to read this. My hope is that you will take hold of the promises that can be yours in Jesus.

This isn't a pretty story. The past two years have spiraled and twisted along, thorny and desperate and often angry. I have wrestled with my faith, wondering with groans and tears why a loving Father would hear my cries for relief and choose not to give it. I have befriended the Psalmists in their pleas, I am intimately acquainted with their grief.

I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?” As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, 'Where is your God?'" Psalm 42:9-10

For two years He did not deliver me. And yet He never left my side. In this, the most difficult season of my life to date, I felt the presence and comfort of my Savior in ways I only wish I could adequately describe. He has been more real to me, more true, more sufficient to hold up my weary arms than I could ever have imagined. To know my God this well, to trust Him with this level of confidence is worth whatever scars I now bear.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea. Psalm 46:1-2

We live in a world broken and corrupted by sin, where sickness and death are common realities. We have a beautiful and powerful promise that one day the world and everything in it will be fully restored, but that day hasn't come yet (Revelation 21). In the meantime, there is a God, the Creator, who already holds Victory in His hand. He loves His children fiercely. He sent His only Son to experience every earthly temptation and heartache so that He can perfectly empathize with us (Hebrews 4:15). He does not promise to remove us from the broken condition of the world, but He does promise to walk through the darkest valleys with us and to supply the power we need to endure (2 Corinthians 4).

This isn't a pretty story, but it IS a glorious one. For now, my psychiatrist and I have finally found a combination of drugs that work for me. I feel more like myself than I have since my girls were born. As I shake off the weight and test my wings, I can't help but be filled with great joy at the steadfastness of my God. He never left me. He never will.

This promise can be as true for you as it is for me. All you have to do is believe in Him and trust in what Jesus accomplished for you when he died on the cross and came up out of the grave. When you are adopted into His family, you have access to His abundant love, mercy, strength and power. If you seek Him, you will find Him, and this will be as true for you as it has been for me:

But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. 'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in Him.'" Lamentations 3:21-24