The Deepest Pit.
The Deepest Pit.
What does that look like?
Perfection? Loss of life? Failure? Mistakes? Cancer? Abandonment? Sin? Bankruptcy? Divorce?
All of these can bring the darkest of times- can take you to a pit and to a point of wondering if you will ever get out. Help. Someone please help. Screaming from the inside wondering if anyone hears her. She is in the deepest pit. Does anyone hear her? She can’t get out. This is so scary. She can’t get out of this! She wants to, but feels hopeless. She so desperately wants to be free!
Hopelessness or Hopeful?
BUT- There is a Living Hope! Living! You hear that, self?
“Though he slay me, yet I will hope in him;” Job 13:15 (emphasis mine)
It’s amazing to me reading the story of Job. His friends failed him. He didn’t have his “person”. His wife failed him, BUT God never failed him.
But why did God allow Job to go through the lowest of lows and the deepest valleys? And how can Job even after all that he went through still hope in the Lord??!
Trust
I have to trust that His ways are greater than my ways. Have to. Otherwise I can go crazy trying to figure it all out. Especially since I am a planner and like to be organized knowing every detail. Even through the lowest pit, the deepest valley- His plan to take me there is far better than any plan that I may think I have.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord” Jeremiah 29:11. Probably the most quoted scripture of all time at graduation, but the background of that verse is pretty amazing. Jeremiah the prophet was sent to Judah to prophesy to that nation during its final years of its decline and fall to the Babylonian empire. They did not have a change of heart and Jeremiah warned that unless there was true national repentance, judgement and destruction would come suddenly. (Wow, sounds a lot like America!) That’s not the amazing part- that brings much sadness, but what is amazing is- even after God was ready to rain down his judgement because of them not turning to him in repentance, he said destruction would happen OR when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. (Jeremiah 25:11 and 29:10). Even God- who is Omniscient- knowing they would not turn to Him (breaking his heart in doing so!) still in His great love and mercy and grace- in His compassion He said he would go get His people and bring them back!
But why?
Why have I had to go through pit after pit- through deepest valley after deepest valley- through troubled water after troubled water? Once again, to trust. Trusting in God’s perfect timing. Doesn’t mean it’s easy. No, not at all. But knowing I am being refined, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another.” Isaiah 48:10,11. It’s for His glory. “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith- of greater worth that gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” It’s for His glory. God’s glory!
So, Awaken, dry bones!!! COME ALIVE!
“O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones; I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life…………
Then you will know that I am the Lord.”
Ezekiel 37:4-6
