There are days when you have no qualms about awakening and getting about your day. Your mind is sharp, your physical abilities are found to be well-tuned. On days like this you have confidence with both God and man, feeling as if your determined service unto both will yield much fruit in time to come. Nobody could discourage you from your purpose when you arise in this frame of mind and spirit. It may be rare but you have experienced seasons of life when you know you are living powerfully as the person God has made you to be, and few things parallel this exhilarating experience for the believer. Finding yourself centered in Christ and enjoying all the inward confirmations that God is good and so is the life He has given you – now that is how to live out your days.
But there are also seasons in your life when the exact opposite is true; your mind is overwhelmed and under-motivated. Aches and pains seize hold of your bones and there is little hope of relief for the day. In moments like these, people are both frustrating to you and frustrated with you. Withdrawal and isolation seem like wiser courses than putting yourself out there to potentially fail…again. Unhappiness seems to be the consistent conclusion to all of your introspection and you are little pleased with who you have become or seem to be becoming. God is silent or, sometimes, seemingly cruel as He appears deaf to your cries for His relief. Yes, fellow-pilgrim, these kinds of days are also allotted to you as you travel underneath earth’s sky. What should we think and choose when finding ourselves in the paradox of our faith?
“From the end of the earth will I call unto Thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” – Psalm 61:2
I’m finding that the counsel is the same to the whistling wayfarer as it is the weary one. Call upon the Lord in your strength, call upon Him again in your struggles. Holy Spirit empowered endurance is the answer and this has never changed. Simply put, you continue to do the right things when you do not sense the inward motivation. Are you provoked? Are you struggling against sin and losing more frequently than you win? Could it be that the enemy harasses you with a dozen different strategies? Ours is the generation, more so than any other, that seems to be regularly offended that God allows deprivation and seeming defenselessness. Saints of old and our Christian contemporaries in other places in the world expect days of difficulty. They rejoice in the goodness of God against the backdrop of life’s pain. There is no wishing-it-away for them because they see all that finds them in life as having passed through the hands of the Almighty One who loves them.
So they
call upon Him
and wait to be
lifted
higher
It does not matter if I write today with the pulsing heart of hope or the throbbing heart of dread. What matters most is that our God has not changed through the night while I slept and He remains as wondrous as ever before. Your God is not only your Master but He is your tender Shepherd. He is leading you and feeding you, sometimes with immediacy and sometimes causing you to wait, to deny you lesser nourishment in the now so that you might be exceedingly hungry when His good pasture inevitably appears. Do you feel the hunger? Then let Him hear your blessed bleating as one of His precious lambs! Call unto Him as He never wearies of your voice. It will not discourage Him if you find nothing strong and robust to proclaim before Him; He is as attracted to your moans as He is your praise as long as both are directed to Him in trust.
His Son is the Rock that is higher than you. That is where He is leading you today and there is no question of your future, safe arrival at home.
“But there are also seasons in your life when the exact opposite is true; your mind is overwhelmed and under-motivated. Aches and pains seize hold of your bones and there is little hope of relief for the day.”
At times like this even the most ‘Spiritual” Christian may turn to Drugs,legal
or illeagl.
to get relief from pain,depression whenour physical body and emotions
run amuck and then we can not get out of the vicious cyle of dependecy.
But Praise The LORD He has a way out a Power Not known to Man.
This was a timely message for me. The trial we are presently going thru seems more than I can bear sometimes. I have those days when I don’t think I can do this, I don’t like myself, I don’t like the situation. I needed the reminder that trials have always been a part of the lives of God’s people and the specail reminder that nothing comes into my life without first passing thru my Father’s hands. My husband has early onset dementia and there is no magic pill to make it go away. I would appreciate your prayers.