Hope for Today, Not Just Tomorrow

Here’s what’s been happening: Life has been sucking. All of it. All of it? All of it.

The last two weeks have been some of the most severe emotional, spiritual, and physically exhausting battles of my life. I have been getting sucker punched from the left and the right. Blindsided. Taken down, only to get back up and be knocked over again. The enemy is after me but God is using it for His glory.

I have cried, yes. And screamed ‘cause I do that too sometimes. I have yelled out to God. Prayed and then prayed harder. Then the wave of the emotional surge passes and I feel His touch, however slight. I begin to feel hopeful that tomorrow will be a better day and yet today, now, I am burdened and weighed down with pain too much for me to carry.

And I heard my Lord say to me, quietly and gently…”There’s hope enough for tomorrow but are you using it for today?”

“I don’t know,” I began to answer knowing good and well what He meant. The real answer is “no”. I am believing that someday, down the road, everything will be alright but am I also believing the same thing for today, this very moment, in this very sticky situation?

Do I honestly think God is going to provide a solution now? Better yet, am I asking Him to? Am I taking steps to see how and what He is doing now in the middle of the storm?

You see the storm is big and dark. It hurls you around and tosses you to and fro. And in the middle of it, for some reason it is easier for me to squint and look out past the clouds and pretend to see a ray of light. When in fact Christ is my Light, even as the darkness closes in.

He is asking me to stop pretending like everything is just hunky dory and to let Him actually carry my burden.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light, he says.

I really want, so much, to take this burden off of my shoulders and allow Him to carry it. Just like anything, I have to practice this idea. When I feel my mind obsessing over all the hurt that has been inflicted and the damage that has been done I must remember to stop those thoughts in their track. Then I must hand those thoughts over to God.

It is an abstract idea and I am a practical type girl. I like concrete solutions and visible results. God, not so much. He says “Trust me without seeing me. Walk with me with blindly. Be still and know that I am God.”

I’m still figuring out how to do all of that because I need Him to take over. Because I am not enough on my own. Because the burden is too heavy and only He can preserve me within the storm.

Are you carrying burdens that God should be carrying? Are you believing Him in the midst of your storms?

How do you surrender daily?

image from Brian Brown, Vanishing South Georgia