Overcoming Despair
Have you ever felt like Job? I have, more than once. Last week was probably the most I ever felt that way.
Now I am blessed in many ways - a husband who loves me unconditionally, 4 healthy children all nearby, wonderful friends, a good job that I like, a nice home, a church to grow in and much more. I do thank God regularly for all these blessings and His faithfulness through the years. That sounds like it should be enough.
Even so last week was one of the roughest spiritual battles I have been through. I have been dealing with a property that my first husband left me that needs to be sold and has been nothing but tremendous stress and financial burden for 24 years. There have been several times I did not know how I would pay the property tax to keep from losing all that has been paid into it. I have shed many a tear over the huge cloud it has been over our lives. My husband has also been suffering from two major illnesses for the past seven years, which has affected our finances, our companionship and communication, and greatly impacts our future. Dealing with both situations on top of regular life stress from work, relationships, responsibilities etc sometimes makes me very, very weary.
Two major financial problems due to these situations plus working on the financials to send two children to college left me feeling greatly stressed and very weary, like I was being pressed in and hanging on with bloody fingernails. I felt despair and hopelessness. I was a living example of the scripture that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12) It was very hard to see a solution and any way out of the problems. I have been praying and crying out to God for all these years about both situations and I felt like God was just not answering and bringing a breakthrough. When a little reprieve I was really looking forward to fell through, I just broke. I cried and cried off and on for 3 days. I did not know what to think or what to do or where to turn. I kept talking to God but honestly had almost no hope left that even He would help me. I found myself asking Him why He was not fulfilling His Word that I have been declaring or bringing me an answer. I just felt like I so badly needed some sign or small breakthrough to give me hope to go on. For the first time in all the crisis and hard times I have been through, I actually could feel like I wanted to just give up and turn away from Him.
But I didn’t. And I realized that the main reason was because I had a firm foundation planted deep in my heart and spirit that God is good and faithful and that His Word is true. I knew I could not deny His Word, even if I couldn’t see or feel it being fulfilled. I know that He and His Word are truly Truth and cannot be denied. It reminded me of the lesson Jesus taught on the house being built on sand or the solid Rock. It really does make a huge difference. (Matthew 7:24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.”
I also realized that it is so important that we seek God and come to know His character and to plant His Word in our hearts before we are tested. If that foundation is not already there, we have no Rock to stand on and we may become lost or swept away by the enemy. The main goal of the enemy is to separate us from relationship with God and he will wear us down or try to deceive us with lies or keep us so busy that we don’t spend time with our Lord and then we are vulnerable to his attacks. Our relationship with God, His Word in our hearts and our personal testimonies of His faithfulness will keep us.
As I stood firm, on that foundation, I could feel the cloud lifting. It is as though I passed the test and now I could begin to feel God’s peace. Nothing in the circumstances really changed- just my thinking and perspective on them. Just after that I began to read a book I just ordered about Staying Full of God (by Andrew Wommack). And there was the key I needed most: Magnify the Lord!! I had actually just heard this in a sermon a couple weeks before so this was confirmation that made me realize this was what God really wanted me to know. I already knew that God is bigger than our circumstance but it hit my heart in a new, deeper way. The book goes on to say that “your relationship with the Lord is really the only thing that matters in your life.”(pg 48). And he goes on to explain on pg. 51 that “your thoughts either magnify or shrink everything. Its’ not what happens to you that’s important, but how you perceive and process it”. I was able to move to a place in my heart and my thoughts to truly surrender the situation totally into God’s hands and to realize that in eternity, this will not matter at all. I am now able to feel His joy in the midst of my circumstances, no matter the outcome and to praise and worship Him wholeheartedly now and into the future.
