Written by Chuck Swindoll, these encouraging devotional thoughts are published seven days per week.
Your personal nourishment is crucial during times of storm. In panic moments, you'll cut a corner on your meals. You'll also fail to get sufficient sleep. It won't be long before you will set aside prayer altogether and you'll find yourself drained, spiritually. Increased emotional pain mixed with decreased spiritual renewal can be lethal to your faith.
The spiritual application is obvious. Our tendency in dire straits is to cut and run. It's easier at the moment to walk out of a troubled marriage than to face it and work toward restoration. Human nature wants to retreat to a place where each one of us can be all alone, lock the door, and pull the blinds. Alienated, we sink further into depression. Tragically some turn to alcohol, drugs, or worse, to a revolver.
Those are treacherous moments when we reach the point of abandoning hope. At that difficult, gut-wrenching moment, God says, "Don't be afraid, I have a plan."
You may never be summoned to stand before kings and queens or be invited to address the political elite or high-ranking military officers; but you will have your own opportunities to stand and deliver.
That may have been the crowning moment of Paul's entire life. Chains on his wrist rattled as the prisoner raised his arms to deliver that closing line. What an epochal moment! His words brought proud Agrippa so close to the throne of grace he nearly bowed before the King of kings!
My friend, go back to the Book. Search for the promises God offers you in His Word. I suggest you start with the Psalms. Look for the promises there. They are myriad. Become familiar with them. Live in them. Walk with them. In some special cases, memorize them. Let them be your guide and comfort.
Still, everyone sooner or later faces the reality of feeling as if life is spinning out of control. That may describe you today. Left unchecked, fear will run its course and paralyze you to the point of helplessness.
Are you feeling alone, mistreated, misunderstood, forsaken? Remember this true account. God is at work. He's there, working behind the scenes. He'll work it out. He has a plan. Just when you're convinced the bottom is about to drop out from under you, He steps in and lifts you to safety.
If you're finally ready to step aside and let Him have His way, say so; then do it. He will honour your admission of weakness by showing Himself strong through you. But if you don't, He won't.
Let's pause long enough here to consider this principle in all seriousness. Your humiliations, your struggles, your battles, your weaknesses, your feelings of inadequacy, your helplessness, even your so-called "disqualifying" infirmities are precisely what make you effective. I would go further and say they represent the stuff of greatness.
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