THE ESSENCE OF FAITH

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

How long, Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in Your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in Your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for He has been good to me.

Psalm 13

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Have you ever been in the midst of a long lasting hardship?

Maybe you have experienced a broken marriage and, as a result, a broken heart. Possibly that marriage ended as a result of infidelity with your partner choosing to have relations with another person while married to you, leaving you not only broken but resentful and hurt as well as finding it difficult to trust someone again as you try and put the pieces of your life back together and move on.

Maybe you are in the middle of long standing financial difficulties, saddled in debt and in a hole so deep you can’t see the way out. It takes everything you make just to break even let alone try and pay off what you owe. You have a family you are trying to provide for and it seems to be harder and harder every day to make it.

Or maybe you have been stricken with an illness which has no cure or have been injured severely enough to leave you disabled. You know you’ll never be well again and each day it’s a little harder to accept your circumstances, especially when you see so many people who are your age and perfectly able to do all the things they want to.

Yes, there are any number of situations that can leave us struggling in life. And often, we might find ourselves feeling just like David in the 13th Psalm. The opening words reveal to us that David is in the midst of some difficulty from his enemies that is causing him distress. Indeed, during David’s reign, he faced peril more than one time while on the throne.

We get a sense that David is, like we sometimes find ourselves, in the middle of a long term hardship, that he has been looking over his shoulder quite a while as his enemies consistently plotted and schemed to kill him to gain the power of Jerusalem’s throne. Look at his words from the psalm:

“How long, Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes.”

Maybe you can relate to these words. Maybe you have wondered how long you will have to be in the midst of your hardship or whether God has forgotten and forsaken you. Maybe you have yearned for God to speak to you and give you some indication about when it will all end and you will be restored back to a normal life.

I know I can because I have been in the midst of difficulties several times in life and in at least two occasions persevered through five years or more of trial before I found my way out. During that time, I learned something very valuable. I learned to keep the faith no matter what.

You see, it’s easy to be faithful when everything is going well in life. The real essence of faith is found when a person keeps it despite going through life’s sufferings and troubles – when we choose to be resolute in trusting God during our most difficult times just as David did. Look at his closing words:

“I trust in Your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in Your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for He has been good to me.”

Yes, David was up against his enemies and was in great distress. But he remembered that he served a God who was even greater, a God who loved him dearly - a God who had been good to him. David trusted God because God had always shown Himself to be trustworthy. And He is still trustworthy today.

So what are we to learn from this psalm? What is the result of following David’s lead and faithfully trusting in the God who loves us and has blessed us so richly?

We find our hearts rejoicing in the midst of trouble and singing the Lord’s praises, despite the uncertainty of when things will get better. Trusting in God brings us assurance even in the middle of uncertainty, assurance that God will deliver us in His appointed time.

Paul wrote that “faith means being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it.” (Hebrews 11:1 NCV) We trust God although we can’t see Him. By faith, we believe and trust in Him. We are to likewise, believe and trust that a better day is ahead for us, even though we can’t see it in our present circumstances.

Are you ready to trust God, even in your hardest or darkest times? When it comes to faith, you must because trusting in any and all circumstances is the very essence of faith.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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