From Defeat to Victory

I know that over the past few months, we have covered some weighty topics. What can I say, sometimes life is just not fun. Sometimes it is just hard. Loved ones, I hope that you sense my heart in this: I don't write because I want to drag everybody through the dark valley; I write, because I know at any given moment any one of you may be going through the darkest of valleys. Sometimes there are dark days, and those days are so incredibly difficult with out a reassuring voice letting you know that in the worst of it: God is at work in your situation.

Listen, dear ones, it is because God is so faithful, that we can endure the worst of it; not because it's supposed to be rosy, but because it is undeniably awful, and it is supposed to be! There are trials that seem as if they will never end, not because God wants us to be miserable; but because He wants to see the best of us. Listen, if it could all be over whenever you wanted it to be: pray tell me, what would you learn from any trial? The pressure would hardly begin before we'd hit the proverbial panic button. It is in the storm and in the trial, loved ones, that God is working to build His purpose in to your heart. Not through some "bad-hair day" experience, but when God has you in the middle of a situation that indelibly puts His purpose in your heart; and that does not happen in the shallow end of the pool, but in the middle of the ocean.

Little by little over the wrestling, hurting and crying; God is giving you His plan: not in the rolling out of a blue-print, but by drawing it for you one line at a time. If there is one thing that I want you to get a hold of in it all, it is this: the hurt, the pain, indeed, the very worst of it, is evidence that God is working out His purpose in your life. It is not an absence of His love, dear soul, it is the very apex of His love, to let you endure something that levels you. Why? So, that He can make you more like His precious Son. Look at Elihu's words from the book of Job: Behold, God does all these things, twice, three times, with a man, to bring back his soul from the pit, that he may be lighted with the light of life. Did you catch that? "That He may be lighted with the light of life," this is exactly what God is doing. Loved one, He has to sometimes break us, so that the light of life, Jesus Christ, may shine through.

More soon, loved ones.