What needed words today, huh? Whose mind ISN’T filled with doubt and questions right now? This time we’re living is weird and constantly changing. Businesses are closed, jobs are on hold or gone, the stock market dropped deep causing many retirement funds to lose tons, church services don’t look like they used to, everything is in turmoil because of a virus we can’t even see.
Doubt.
Does it crowd into your mind, even though you’re striving to keep your thoughts on Christ? Does it feel like sometimes someone is pushing that gigantic battering ram of fear and doubt into your brain over and over?
Yeah, I get it. I’m living in this too.
Here, though, we see the psalmist say that in the midst of doubt and turmoil, God provided comfort that renewed hope and cheer. How can that happen if we can’t see God? How could hope and cheer be renewed when we can’t begin to find it?
Oh, Friend, I’m here to tell you, I don’t understand the hows, but I sure do enjoy the truth. I know that in the deepest sorrows I’ve experienced, God has met me there. No, not like I saw Him and we had a cup of coffee. I felt His presence through the comfort He gave when I cried out to Him.
In my deepest pit of despair, the time when my mind told me the only way of relief for me was to end my life — since I was saved, I would go to heaven, and the world didn’t need me anyway — I experienced this renewed hope and cheer. Over the 12 long years of living in that pit, I felt this renewed hope and cheer several times.
No, full relief didn’t happen the first time I cried out, that took me working with God to deal with that which was holding me fast in the muck and mire of my pit. But every time I cried out to the Lord, it seemed as though He was in that pit with me, lifting my head up, reminding me of my worth. Out of the blue, someone would call or I’d get a card reminding me that I was loved. “Out of the blue,” you know that’s code for “God did something,” right?
Today, in this fearful time, it’s so easy to slip into a pit of despair. I pray you reach up to the Father before you slide in. Seek Him constantly. Every time a doubt enters your mind, don’t be ashamed! Tell God about it. Pretend you’re a six-year-old tattling on someone. Spend time in the Word. God promises to meet us there, so if we devour it, we have fewer doubt-moments — or at least when they come, we don’t collapse in despair.
Beloved of God, every person of God you’ll read about in the Bible had doubts. That is NOT A SIN! Don’t be afraid to take that to the Lord as soon as you have a thought. He’s much more concerned with what we allow that doubt to do to us or what we do with it. Take it to Him immediately and drop it there. He’s willing and able to take it off your hands.
Trick is, you have to leave it lying there. Don’t even touch that baggage! Not even with a fingertip. Scoot. God has plans for you and this virus hasn’t changed that. Promise.
Coffee, Bible, Journal.
