Dark Times? Suffering? God Is STILL Here

I must confess that I do not always remember all the wise things that God continues to teach me. Yet, I bless God for all the times when He reminds and corrects me, returning me to His ways. Even though His corrections aren't usually pleasant for my flesh, still, I praise Him for setting me straight or using me for His glory. The life and trials of Job (pronounced with long "O") show us how little we understand many things that happen around us, even as Job was in the middle of trials that God allowed and Satan all too willingly precipitated, as God proved to Satan that Job's faith could not and would not be destroyed. As with Job, so may every believer trust the promises and salvation in which God holds the souls who call upon Him, even in our darkest hours.

In Jeremiah 33:3, God says to Jeremiah, "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not." We need to remember that the full context of this passage includes the fact that God said that to His prophet when Jeremiah was in prison, not when the man was out to dinner with friends, or at the country club, or living a life of ease.

If you were to read the rest of Jeremiah, you'd see that at that point in his life, Jeremiah had been faithfully doing what God was telling him to do, so he wasn't imprisoned for doing anything wrong, but, just the opposite. We may have to suffer some awful things in life, even though we continue to do what is right. Let us not forget that Jesus Himself said that the world will hate those who trust Him and put us through sufferings similar to what He suffered, which sometimes means that we shall suffer terrible things, especially because we do exactly what God says is the right thing to do. We should not be surprised when awful things attack us, since the world is NOT a friend of God, AND it hates those who really love Him.

IF you have truly trusted God's Christ, then do not be surprised and do not despair whenever you suffer any kind of persecution or misery for the sake of Christ. God shall carry you through it, all for His glory and for your eternal crown. When God is not correcting us for our own faults, we may also suffer so that God can expose sin in others and call them to repentance. Yet, God STILL loves us, His children, though our faith must endure sufferings on His behalf. We and our sufferings are precious to Him, because He knows exactly what we are going through. The One True God and His Christ have NOT forsaken us, NOR has either forgotten us.

Are you still struggling with who Christ is? or how to be sure you are forgiven of your sin and are born of His Spirit? Remember what Jesus said in John 8:34-36.