When You Don’t Understand Why – Part 5 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning,

Welcome to the end of the work week. And as we head into Friday, we want to talk some more about our theme for this week, which is what do you do when you don’t understand why, when your circumstances have turned bad, your hope is fading, you can’t see any way forward. The light is dimming. And you don’t know why this would be happening.

Why would God allow this? Why am I in this circumstance? What do you do when you’re in that situation?

If you’re not there now, you will be sooner or later. And probably for most of us, we have been in that situation, and many of us listening today probably are looking for hope and looking to answer this question Why am I struggling in such a desperate way and what way forward is there?

Well, on Monday we said, when you don’t know why, remember who, and we looked at Job in his desperate circumstances, saying in the middle of his description of his suffering, his abandonment by everyone important to him, his sense even of abandonment by God. Yet saying in the middle of all of that, I know that my Redeemer lives. Remember who and the who is God. Secondly, Tuesday we saw when you don’t know why, talk to God about it. Don’t wait till you have some beautiful things to say to God to talk to Him. Talk to him about your struggles, your questions, the why.

And when Paul did that, when he was struggling with his thorn in the flesh that was tormenting him so terribly and God wasn’t removing it when he asked God to remove it.

That God gave him a new perspective on his struggle that changed the way Paul viewed it and could accept it. Wednesday we saw how God may want to use you in that desperate situation. Remember, life isn’t about you. It’s about how God will use you in the lives of other broken struggling people around you. How can He use you in that situation? When He could not use you in any other situation.

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Then yesterday we saw the 4th step is to trust God to bring you through. Because that’s what God does. He’s there for us when there’s no other hope, when no one else could help us. You just have to hold on to this. God is with me. God is with me, even if He’s not doing what I want Him to do in this circumstance. He will walk with me through it. He will keep me going, and that leads us right to today’s big lesson.

When you’re facing struggles and you don’t know why, don’t give up. Don’t give up. Keep on going with your eyes on Jesus. Keep just taking the next step when you can’t think about some big vision for the future because you’re just struggling with what’s right now. Just take the next step. Don’t even think about tomorrow.

In this moment, keep on going. Don’t give up. God is here. God is involved. God is listening, and He’s with you. This is not the end. There is always hope when God is involved.

Listen to what the apostle Paul says when he writes to the Romans in the New Testament of the Bible in Romans chapter 8 starting in verse 18. Paul says.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed, for the creation itself was subjected to frustration.

This is when mankind first fell from grace, disobeyed God, pushed him out of their lives. They became broken, and all of this world, all of creation became broken too. Paul says creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice but by the will of the One who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning. You look at the natural disasters, the brokenness, the pain, the death that is involved in this creation. The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And then Paul says not only so, but we ourselves also.

Even Christians who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies when Christ returns. For in this hope we were saved. Hope that is seen is no hope at all. But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Don’t give up.

Even though you don’t have relational energy, spend time with your Christian friends who will remind you of God and who will pray with you and help you to keep on going. Don’t give up. When you don’t know why, just keep on going with Jesus.

I’m John North.

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