Devotional
I’m sure we can all think of a time we have been at our lowest low with what seems like no way out, but I want to tell you that in these darkest moments, this is when the Lord’s love shines the brightest.
Imagine you are in a dark room with no light besides one candle. You’re trying to focus on that light because it’s the only thing with you in that dark room. You use the candle to find the light switch on the wall. With relief, you find it. Now that you have all this artificial light, you put the candle down and forget about it or maybe go back and visit it every so often to light it and blow it out.
I think you see where I’m going. The dark room is you at your lowest and the candle is the Lord. The Lord is there with you as God always is, but since God is the only light, He is easier to see and focus on. He guides you back to light – the normal – out of the lowest points in your life. But as He guides you out you lose track of the Lord. You tuck God away in a drawer of your life, visiting with Him every now and again, but mostly forgetting him.
A few years ago I was at my lowest low, in an unimaginably dark room. Oddly, it was this same season in which I grew in my faith in unimaginable ways.
I was betrayed, taken advantage of, and hurt by someone I considered one of my closest friends. I don’t know how to quite explain it. The strange thing is, that looking back on it now, it was in this same season of trauma that God grew in my life. I don’t wish what happened to me on anyone. And at the same time, I am so grateful for the person it made me today.
In that season God sent someone into my life to help me through and draw me closer to the Lord. I could have never gotten through without the Lord.
I was in my dark room and the Lord was my candle helping me find greater light. As it goes, after I found the light, I put the candle of my faith back in the drawer. I faltered in my relationship with the Lord, but God is good. This year during another low in my life, I kept the candle – the Lord – at the center of my life as he is my identity and my strength.
Sometimes the Lord allows you to go through trials and tribulations which make you stronger, but truly this strength is not the “sharpening your weapons to prepare for war” type of strength but rather strengthening your heart type of strength.
Until you take the Lord – the light of our life – with you out of the darkness and in your heart, nothing will change. Hold Him in your heart during your highs and your lows. Let Him into your heart. Let Him Change it. And when you are facing your lows remember Psalm 23:4: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Hays Turner, Senior at High Point University
