Love to hear from and know who is listening
Do you ever feel tired of waiting, weary of fighting to find your joy, and exhausted from hoping for better days? Do you push down feelings of despair and hopelessness because you don’t think a Christian is allowed to struggle with such “faithless” feelings? Well, let me assure you – you aren’t alone! For the most part I am a person that is optimistic and I often see the glass as half full and not half empty. However, I have known a time in my life when I felt defeated, despair and loneliness clouded my view of life and left me wondering if I would ever find love again. I had been a single father of 3 girls for 4 years and I was tired of going it alone. I thought I would never find a good Christian woman to share my life with. God’s word says that it is okay to perplexed, but don't be led to despair.
2 Corinthians 4: 8-9 CSB We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed.
Why, then, do I feel such a sense of hopelessness and despair? Almost without exception we all have seasons where it feels as if darkness is closing in around us, creating confusion and doubts. We cry out to God – but He seems silent. We plead for relief, but the pain only intensifies. Suddenly, the God we thought we knew is at odds with the circumstances of our life. How do we fight for hope when we begin to despair of life itself? Recognize earthly despair for what it is, temporary. If your feeling hopeless because your life isn't working out the way you had hoped, your not alone, even Paul felt despair and a loss of hope.
2 Corinthians 1: 8-10 CSB We don’t want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction that took place in Asia. We were completely overwhelmed, beyond our strength, so that we even despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and he will deliver us. We have put our hope in him that he will deliver us again.
Christian, when suffering leaves you feeling hopeless, convinced that you will never know anything but the pain that aches within you, fix your eyes on the promises of God and trust that he is faithfully working in and through you for his good purposes. Allow yourself to grieve the disappointments, pain and the loss of those we love in this world, be honest with the Lord as you wrestle with your emotions and sense of hopelessness. Ask God to give you his strength to endure when you’re strength has dried up, remember what appears hopeless to us is never beyond the redeeming power of our Savior. One day, the darkness will be no more, and your faith will become sight.
2 Corinthians 4: 16-18 CSB Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Standing on the promises that cannot fail. When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail. By the living Word of God I shall prevail. Standing on the promises of God. Standing on the promises I shall not fall, Listening every moment to the Spirit’s call. Resting in my Savior as my All in all, Standing on the promises of God.
