As our relationship develops and deepens with Jesus Christ, we understand that his faithful love and the Word of God are the powers that grow faith. It is inevitable that our faith in God, that which we say we believe, will be tried while living in this world. When spiritual belief is tested, one or two things will happen. Either our genuine faith will be validated as reality in our heart and lives, or we will find our faith being overcome by fear, doubt and unbelief. During times of personal trial, darkness works hard to pull God’s children into fear and negativity in order to squelch our desire to continue on in a loving, dependent, trusting, growing relationship with Jesus Christ, and to pull us out of spiritual oneness with the Holy Spirit. Satan uses the same stratagems over and over, yet it seems we are such spiritual babes we rarely recognize his tactics.
Due to the longevity of King David’s trials, he began to doubt God’s faithful love. He felt like the Lord did not care about his struggles, had forgotten him, and was no longer listening to the cries of his heart. When we feel weary and the way seems too long, the enemy’s strategy is to bring doubt, discouragement, and tear at our wounded hearts. Once we begin to doubt God’s goodness, we can be easily pulled into the blinding darkness of self-pity: Poor me, poor me, poor me. My life has always been hard and will always be hard. Embracing self-pity leads to victimization, which sets our main focus on feeling oppressed, ill-treated, or unfairly treated. Jesus has given us the power to be healed and overcome our past and present difficulties. Through Jesus Name we can become victors not victims! Self-pity will steal our good future, faith, and hope. On this path we will certainly find ourselves in the pattern of blindly wallowing in darkness and feeling spiritually dead.
Yet in spite of King David’s feelings of rejection and self-pity, somewhere deep down in his hurting heart he grasped on to the hope that God’s love was bigger than his weakness. In desperate need, David walked past the frustration, fear, and the unbelief he was expressing. He cried out to the living God to enlighten his eyes of faith that he might behold God’s face in his spiritual pitch-black darkness. David recognized that God’s unconditional love was the only power that could lift him out of spiritual darkness and bring him back to the place of growing, steadfast faith. In spite of his negative feelings, he remembered God’s faithfulness in past trials, and it helped him turn in another direction – back to trusting in, lean on, and being confident in God’s mercy and loving-kindness. David believed that God would help his heart to rejoice and lift him into high spirits again! He had a connection with the loving God of his salvation! If you are struggling in your faith today, God is only a cry away and will help draw you out of your unbelief, while revealing His faithfulness to you, as you continue to turn and run towards Him. Remember the Logos promise, “If with all your heart you truly seek me, you shall ever surely find me, thus saith the Lord”.
“How long will You forget me, O Lord? Forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long must I lay up cares within me and have sorrow in my heart day after day? Consider and answer me, O Lord my God: lighten the eyes of my faith to behold Your face in the pitchlike darkness, lest I sleep the sleep of death”Psalm13:1-3.
