Tag Archives: faith

When you feel defeated

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Sometimes, we hope and pray so hard for something good, and it seems like the answer is no. What do we do? How do we move forward when things feel so hopeless.

“For My ways are not your ways”

“Father, if there is any other way, please take this cup…Your will be done.”

I’ve been in this place before and it’s one of the more unpleasant places. You put in all the hard work, were best suited for that promotion and it didn’t happen. You trained so hard for that race and your workouts were all showing you should be more than able to hit that goal, but race day comes and you fail miserably. Why did I even bother?

I remember going through some of the secondary infertility we experienced and feeling so hopeful going into a month that everything was done “right” only to stare in anger at yet another negative pregnancy test.

Sometimes it’s even bigger than that. Sometimes it’s in regards to laws and policies that leave you feeling completely gutted.

In all these situations, it felt like you did what you were supposed to do, but didn’t get the results. It’s hard to not feel like it’s a judgement of you personally. It’s hard to not be angry. It’s hard to not feel hopeless or wonder why you should put yourself out there emotionally ever again.

Take heart. Jesus was preaching in a corrupt Roman Empire. And word spread quickly of His teachings and His healing and He even was said to be the long awaited Messiah prophesied. People were full of hope. Hope that He, like Moses would lead the people out of oppression.

When He rode a donkey, people waved palms, fulfilling yet another prophesy. Yet He was murdered. Not only that but He was mocked and humiliated. Stripped down naked. The people who truly believed He was the Messiah must have wondered why He didn’t free Himself from the cross and end it all there. Instead, He allowed it to occur.

Can you imagine what the believers must have been feeling? I can. I can feel it. They were hopeless. It would seem that the naysayers were right all along. They were made out to be fools and conspiracy theorists. But this wasn’t the end of the story.

Jesus rose on the third day. And on the day of Pentecost was the birth of Christianity. A fire that still burns brightly today. The Bible is still the bestselling book of all time.

It’s hard not to feel dismayed, hopeless, broken or even humiliated when we think we’ve been defeated. I urge you to remember that the story is not over. Sometimes God is working something even bigger and better in our moments that feel like defeat.

Don’t give in to feeling hopeless. Sing praises and be joyful even in your suffering. The enemy wants us feeling broken and defeated. But we have a strength that they can’t take away.

Encourage each other. Get back up and joyfully do the work. Pray. Love. Rejoice in your sorrows and let the flame within you shine all the brighter. Laugh when you are mocked. Don’t allow yourself to be humiliated. Be brave like Daniel going into the flaming furnace, saying “even if God doesn’t get me out of this, He is still God!”

If you want to change the world, go home and love your family. Love your community. Love your enemy.

The split road

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I was out running with my dog this morning and suddenly he started acting strange. He’s always either running a bit in front of me or directly at my side. He’s never running behind me unless he’s taking a quick pee and then he sprints to catch up.

He was definitely trotting behind me. I called to him and yet he still kept back a bit. Puzzled, I started to look around. That’s when I saw it.

We were jogging down a long country road where you could see much more than a mile into the distance. Looking straight on you could see a cloudy sky, mostly heavy shades of vanilla. To the left, there was a wide open field and a mostly light sky and you could actually see the sun rays poking through the clouds. It looked beautiful and for some reason seeing rays of light poking through the clouds like that always makes me feel God’s presence.

The view to our right was another story. The sky was so dark it seemed nearly black. Heavy storm clouds were creating this ominous feeling. It was after looking at that sky that I noticed the strong wind.

I had checked the forecast before going out and there was a good chance of rain but I didn’t see any storms. It certainly looked like a storm and I figured it was scaring my dog.

I looked back to the left. Peaceful. Beautiful. Calm. I looked again to the right. Dark. Stormy. Frightening.

Suddenly I noticed I had picked up the pace. If I continued running forward, I’d eventually run away from that dark sky but it was going to take a while. What if a bad storm did come on suddenly when we were out here? I looked around. There were plenty of barns we could duck into.

I looked again at the rays of light poking through the clouds on my left and prayed quickly that He would keep us safe. I focused on that light and calm and I wasn’t afraid. When I looked at the dark sky and how much further I had to run, I felt more anxious.

I knew I needed to just trust and feel confident that things were under control. When I focused on the light, it was easier. When I focused on the dark, it was easy to let the fear creep in.

And isn’t this the way it is in life? When we focus on our fears, our doubts, our insecurities, the what if’s in life, that’s all we can see. How long till we out run the storm?

When we set our confidence on the light, we see all the safe places we can shelter if need be, but don’t focus on that too much. We keep going on, confident, and secure that our path is the right one and it’s going to get us where we need to be.

Eventually, it started raining and the wind started really blowing against us. I got my dog back to my side and encouraged him that it was ok. He seemed to do better knowing I was not afraid.

We made it back and there never ended up being any thunderstorms, just rain and wind.

But storms can happen any time so it’s best to be prepared for them. If they do catch you by surprise, know where to look to keep you safe and secure. Feel confident in the light.

Exodus part 3

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The first part of this post can be found here, and the second part here.

So we left off with God showing up to Moses in the fields he’s working for his father in law Jethro, a priest of many gods. Moses is married to Jethro’s daughter and they have two children. As far as we can tell, Moses is living a happy, simple life.

God says incredible things to Moses. He says that He’s heard the cries of His people and has compassion on them and plans to lead them out of slavery with Moses’s help. And how does Moses respond? Like a noble leader who is brave and ready and honored to do his part for the good of his people? No.

Moses basically tells God that he’s not up to the challenge and he comes up with plenty of excuses why he can’t do it.

And I have to wonder, even though Moses doesn’t SAY he is comfortable in his life and just doesn’t WANT to, if that’s more or less what was going on in his heart. And far be it for me to judge Moses for this. I can only try to imagine myself, while washing dishes one day hearing the voice of God telling me these things and thinking I wouldn’t respond the same way.

So it gets me back to what I really wanted to write about as the thoughts came together for me while reading in Exodus this time. How often are we unwilling to do what we should do because it seems overly burdensome in our comfortable lives we lead?

I know for me personally, several years ago I would NEVER have shared my thoughts on faith publicly because I was worried about the way I would be perceived by my peers. But sometimes we get to a place where we realize we have to speak out and believe that God will be with us when we do. This is also spiritual maturity. The story of Moses is also a great story that illustrates spiritual maturity.

So going back to Moses; To all his objections, God tells him that He will be with him. Yet Moses still resists. This kindles God’s anger.

How often have we been there? We feel this tugging in our soul. We KNOW that God wants us to do something that is for our good but we resist. We come up with excuses because it’s hard. For me, there are so many times in life I’ve been where Moses was. One time was when I knew I needed to read the Bible every day to grow spiritually but it seemed like I didn’t have the time. I had all these excuses. I don’t have more hours in my day now than I did back then, but I finally made reading in my Bible daily my priority.

There’s someone in my life that I won’t name that confessed they wanted to give up drinking. Not permanently but for a period of time to try to rid themselves of the crutch it had become. Yet, the night before they intended to give it up, they wanted to have a few drinks, and this was how I knew they weren’t serious. It’s why the sign “free beer tomorrow” is so funny. Because it’s easy to say you’re going to do something hard tomorrow but it’s hard to start today. I told this person if they felt they needed to remove alcohol as a spiritual road block, if they were serious, they would start today. By thinking you need “one last fix”, I don’t really believe someone’s heart is really prepared to let that thing go.

With the addiction that ruined the relationship I had with someone in my family I could very easily see this struggle. I honestly don’t think he wanted to be a slave to alcohol. Yet he could never seem to get to the point where he could put in the hard work today. The alcohol was too much of a comfort to him and even though God would be with him, he couldn’t let go of the bondage it kept him in.

So, again we go back to Moses. God is angry with him, but tells him that his brother Aaron can be the one to speak since one of Moses’s excuses was that he was a poor speaker. God also tells him that all the men that wanted to kill him for his murder of the Egyptian are now dead.

So Moses takes his wife and kids and starts heading back to Egypt. Here it gets interesting again. It says on the way that the Lord met Moses again and sought to kill him. Why??

Well, we see next in the text that Zipporah, his wife, took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son, and threw it at Moses feet and said, “Surely a bloody husband ART thou to me.” So God let Moses go, and then Zipporah says, “A bloody husband THOU ART.” Because of the circumcision.

The first time I read this, I was wondering what in the world was happening! I searched out some help online and think I understand it better today. I think it’s another example of where Moses was spiritually at this time.

It was already a custom among Israelites to circumcise their men. The book of Genesis talks about Circumcision of males by their 8th day of birth as part of the Abrahamic covenant with God. So the fact that Moses had moved off to Midian and had children there but had not circumcised his own son yet, seems like it became a problem.

We can’t tell from the text if God had told him to do this and Moses disobeyed or put it off or what. What we do see is that Moses’s disobedience was literally killing him. His wife, though not one of God’s people herself, was quick to act to save her husband by performing the Circumcision on her son. And her act did save Moses.

Sometimes our actions or inactions are so destructive to us that people outside our faith can plainly see it too. Moses had a long way to grow spiritually, but we can see throughout his life, God was with him, putting many people in his life (regardless of whether or not they were Israelites or not) that helped him along.