When You Don’t Understand Why – Part 4 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning,

We’re talking all this week about what to do when you don’t know why. What I mean is when you don’t know why God would allow you to be in such a terrible circumstance, such a helpless, hopeless situation.

The days are dark. You honestly can’t imagine how they could ever end, and you’re plagued by this question. Why? You want to answer it for yourself and you want to ask God it. Why would this situation arise in my life?

Well, we’ve seen a number of answers. When you don’t know why, remember who. Remember the nature of God and that He’s there. You can trust Him. Hope is never gone when God is there. Secondly, talk to God about it.

Don’t just keep it in your heart and mind getting more and more helpless and hopeless. Talk to God. You don’t just talk to God when you’ve got sweet, beautiful things to say to Him. You talk to Him out of the pain in your life, asking the question why as well, and let God impact your perspective. Third, look for how God may want to use you in that situation.

It may be that in those circumstances, it is the only way that God could use you to speak to someone else in those circumstances or someone you encounter because of your circumstances. Don’t forget this life is not about you. It’s about what God wants to do through you in the lives of other people.

And then today here’s the big lesson when you don’t know why – Trust God to bring you through.

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Trust God to bring you through. I remember a few years ago I was in such a bad place personally and truly desperate and feeling hopeless. I was at the end of myself. I was slipping into despair. And God kept bringing me back to this. I’m still here. I’m still with you. And I leaned on Him. I clung to Him. I held on to Him. I knew that there was no one else and not myself either, that could take me through what I was struggling with, but God could take me through. I held on to Him. I prayed to Him. I read scriptures. I listened to music that reminded me about God.

And as time went by, God took me through. I began to come out of that dark place, and I’m so glad I trusted God. You remember the people in the Bible who trusted God, and he brought them through.

You remember the people of Israel trusted Moses and followed him and left Egypt where they had been enslaved, and then the Egyptians changed their minds about letting them go, and they came with their huge army. The Israelites arrived at the Red Sea, and they couldn’t get across it. The Egyptian army was coming behind them with all their chariots. They were desperate.

But they trusted God, and God led Moses to stretch his rod out of the water, and that amazing miracle of the sea being parted, and they crossed over on dry ground, another miracle. You remember when Gideon was called by God to deliver the Israelites from the Midians who were enslaving and oppressing them, and Gideon had only 300 men against this massive army. But they trusted God in what seemed an impossible circumstance, and God brought about that amazing change in their circumstances.

You remember when the city of Jerusalem was being besieged by an army of hundreds of thousands of people and some Jewish lepers, people with leprosy, were stuck outside the city walls, and they thought, what should we do? Everyone’s starving inside if we tried to get in there and out here is the army that’ll kill us. Well, God was in that situation, and God brought them out to a place of safety. You remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in captivity in Babylon, then raised to be a part of the government and exposed in their worship of God rather than the ruler of that empire thrown into the fiery furnace and before they went in they said, Our God is able to deliver us, but even if He does not, we’re not going to worship your idol.

And we’ve seen this week the apostle Paul also trusting God and God bringing him through. When you go through times when all hope seems lost and you’re in despair, the only thing you have to hold on to is not a thing, but a person, and that person is God, and He will bring you through.

I’m John North.

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