If you faint in the day of trouble,
your strength is small!…Although a righteous person may fall seven times, he gets up again,
but the wicked will be brought down by calamity.~ Proverbs 24:10, 16
National Election Day… There is a palpable sense with many that America, as we have known it, may be very much at stake. The vote and time will tell.
On a more “local” scale, there may be times when things feel like a scene from a Buster Keaton movie—the wheels have come off, and you are sitting amongst the wreckage. You had an almost unconscious faith in your conveyance through the pothole-filled road called life, only to discover that your grip on the steering wheel really didn’t afford you the control over life’s affairs you thought it did. So then what?
The Apostle Paul’s words in II Corinthians 12 are sound perspective. In capsulated form: Paul found himself with an unavoidable, unfixable, unshift-able trial. He pleaded with the Lord to lift the trial. The Lord answered that it was the trial that put Paul in a place of access to the deep riches of God’s grace, which if surrendered to, would be the apostle’s very strength to endure, and thereby glorify God. Paul’s response? “I’m in!”, thus discovering the power of Christ resting in him, with great contentment to boot.
Whatever personal, relational, medical, professional, ministerial, moral, or other challenge you are facing today, the Lord will give you the strength to revive, get back up, press into Him, and press on—even if your forward progress now comes with a little “hitch in yer get-along”—Festus did alright, and Jacob’s spiritual life actually took off!
And as to elections…how precious to know that, however the national one goes, if you are in Christ, you have been chosen—elected, if you will—to life that will outlast any human government. So get up, get on, and rejoice!
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