For a long time, you’ve been struggling with deep hurts, unresolved conflicts, and emotional baggage. You took your pains to be signs that God had abandoned you and left you alone in the wilderness.
I know it doesn’t feel this way right now, but I want you to know that nothing could be further from the truth.
Sometimes it can be difficult to see past what we’re going through, especially when the end seems to be nowhere in sight. And I know how hard you’ve tried to seek after God through the different trials you’ve faced over the past few years. I know how tightly you held on to Him even when you went through situations that you couldn’t understand. I know how desperately you tried to look for answers.
You sacrificed a huge part of your youth to serve Him. You traded lucrative job offers for the mission field—giving up material comforts, financial security, and even family relationships—to live among the poor and build His kingdom there. You were crushed when things didn’t quite go as you had hoped, and you were asked to leave after many heated disagreements with your co-workers. You came home broken, jaded, and disillusioned.
But still you did not let it deter you from continuing to live your life for Him. You wanted your life to count for Him, so you threw yourself into more ministry opportunities, signed up for theological studies, and spent more time with Him.
I know life has handed you many unanswered questions. Questions like why did God allow this to happen? Why didn’t He give a way out? Why doesn’t He make it easier for us to see what He is doing behind the scenes? I wish I was able to help you find better answers, greater comfort, and more peace.
I still don’t have answers for you now.
But here’s what I’ve known to be true: Even at the lowest moments of my life, God has never abandoned me.But here’s what I’ve known to be true: Even at the lowest moments of my life, God has never abandoned me.
I have had questions in my life too! I remember the time when I felt like I was on the top of the world—I was in what I thought was my dream job then—and then everything came crashing down in a single day? That day, I didn’t just lose my job. I also lost my vision and zest for life, and all my well-laid plans crumbled into dust. I lost my job, my family, my home and what I thought was my life. I went from being on top of my career and life to being homeless, alone and afraid. I thought I had lost everything!
It took me a long time to recover from it, and to begin to believe again that God knew what He was doing with my life. But God was there with me when I decided to move from the big city life, to south Georgia hoping that I’d have a clearer vision of what I should do next with my life.
I was like a fish out of water. I had no car so I walked around a strange town trying to find a job. I only knew how to draw blueprints. Everywhere I applied said that I was over qualified or under qualified. All I knew was that I was unemployed.
As if it wasn’t exhausting enough to apply for job after job and hear nothing back, I was confronted with so many questions about why I was still unemployed (with the underlying suggestion that I wasn’t trying hard enough). You knew how difficult it was to push myself out of the house to meet more questions I couldn’t answer. I thank God that my best friend and his wife kept encouraging me.
After nine months of living with my mother at the age of forty, which in itself was very humbling, I found a job working as a screen print artist.
It was a huge struggle to get out of bed each day, and I’d reach home every night drained and depressed, wondering how I’d be able to summon enough energy to get to work the next day.
God saw me grow in despair as I watched the only friends I had at work moving on to other things. I envied how easily God gave them a way out—while I was still stuck there, left to fend for myself. I was bitter and angry with God, I couldn’t understand how it could possibly be good for me to stay in that place.
God saw the big picture. I could only see the brick in the wall that I was facing. The owner had to cut back on labor, but he didn't want to lay me off, so he sent me to his biggest client, and hired me on the spot with a salary that was over four times what I was making.
This was not just a door opening. This was a floodgate of blessing! Someone gave me a beat up sportscar that I restored. Three churches in the area asked me to help them get started. Requests for revivals started pouring in. In the next decade God blessed me to travel to twenty six states and five countries preaching the Gospel.
Now, the different threads of pain and confusion from those years of struggle are finally coming together. And I’m beginning to see the picture that God intended to weave all this while.
I don’t know if I can ever say that the pain of what I went through was worth it, but I know that it gave me a little taste of what it’s like to share in the fellowship of Jesus’s sufferings (Philippians 3:10)—and I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world.
I’m sharing my story with you not to belittle or trivialize what you’re going through, or even to add salt to your wounds. I’m writing this blog to remind you of how much I valued those times when God sat with me in silence, mourned with me in my struggles, and rejoiced with me in my breakthroughs. Like you I thought God had abandoned me. But He was with me every step of the way. You see I was trying to fix my life on my own.. He was gently saying, "Come here my child." And I want you to know that He is here to do the same for you.
For many years, I’ve held Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 close to my heart, and I rejoice in the opportunity to walk with you, and comfort you with the comfort that I myself have received from God (v 4).
Perhaps these words feel meaningless to you right now. But just as friendship and prayers helped me fix my eyes on God when I was tempted to falter, I am determined to keep praying and believing with you that we will see the Lord’s goodness together. That one day, everything will make sense. And none of what you have been through would be wasted.
And that you will wake up tomorrow with a different kind of fire. It will be with the hard-won confidence of the psalmist, who can now say, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1). It will be with the purity of one who has gone through God’s refining fire, and emerged as pure as gold (Job 23:10). It will be with the tenderness of one who has tasted and seen the goodness of a God who pursues us relentlessly, even when we’ve decided to let go of His hand.
Until then, I will keep praying with you, walking with you, waiting with you. And though you might not know me, know this...God and I are for you.
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