When. Not if, WHEN.
My pastor often says, if you’re not going through a tough season, you’ve just come out of one or you’re about to go into one. They’re going to come.
God gives us comfort in this verse from Isaiah where He says WHEN, not if. He knew from the beginning that we would face seasons that aren’t pleasant.
He knew we’d have heartache and grief. He knew we would face betrayal and diagnosis. He knew that we would need help getting through all that would come, and so He said,
I WILL BE WITH YOU.
Don’t we wish He had said, “I’ll take you out of it…” or “I’ll fix it for you…”?
Except, then, we wouldn’t experience His presence in our need. Think about that.
In our troubles, horrid circumstances—divorce, stress, grief, betrayal, fear, anguish, anxiety, mundane, addictions, wealth, loss….life—God is with His followers. With. As in, in the storms with us.
We get to experience the presence of the Lord in our lives before we experience Him in heaven, but it is through the deep waters and the fires of life, not the ease.
James said to count it all joy when we face all sorts of troubles and trials. That never made much sense to me until I coupled it with these words of Isaiah. It is easy, in the periods of plenty, to miss the presence of the Almighty. Maybe even to ignore Him as we are feeling pretty smug about how well we’re doing, believing it’s on our own.
I’m not saying I want to remain in a trial all the time, but I’m saying I want to experience God’s presence with me all the time. I want to recognize that He is for me. I want to revel in the fact that no matter where I am, as His child, He is with me always, and hearing that I have cancer or learning that someone has betrayed me doesn’t change that. Those things merely bring the truth to the forefront.
Believer, hear God’s voice speaking to you today. Hear His heart talking to yours. You’re not alone. You’re not on your own. You’re not without hope. He is with you. God is with you.
Coffee, Bible, Journal.
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Faye Bryant is an author, coach, and speaker who helps individuals escape the lies of the enemy, live into God’s truth, and build a better life by first feeling, dealing, and healing their way through a stuck future or an abused past, toward a deeper path of purpose, and into the unhackable life of their chosen legacy. Hers is a story of resurrection: from death to life!
