As the rain kept falling over this past weekend, my heart kept sinking. After months of work and thousands of dollars spent, the evidence mounted that everything we had done to eliminate water in our crawlspace had failed to make a difference. The water kept rising. The only solution left was the one we were trying to avoid and could not afford—sealing our crawlspace, an $8,000-$10,000 project.
As one who has been in vocational ministry all his adult life, money has always been an issue. Unlike, perhaps, some mega church pastors who can earn six figure salaries and be awarded large retirement packages, campus ministers, small church pastors, and missionaries never get financially rich doing what they do. And, for most of us, there are times when we wonder how we are going to make it through a financially challenging time or how we are going to make it when the time comes to retire. For me, this weekend was one of those times.
I fretted. I worried. I snapped at my wife. I saw our meager savings evaporating before my eyes. I envisioned a future of owning two vehicles with a half a million miles between them and working until my last breath just to have enough income to survive. In a few short hours I had conjured up in my mind the worst possible scenario for my life.
Have you ever done that? When things get extremely stressful and seemingly hopeless, it is easy for our minds to go into the depths where there is no light and no sense of escape. Though I have never been suicidal, I am guessing that is what it feels like.
Fortunately, my distress was short-lived. The Lord had been trying to comfort me, first with a seemingly miraculous rainbow that appeared on our drive to church on Sunday morning. Out of nowhere this rainbow appeared, amidst the dark clouds and rain. “Remember my promises,” He seemed to be saying. And then yesterday while exercising, part of this passage came to my mind: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” I knew that was true—in my mind. The challenge was to embrace it in my heart. To live it out in the midst of this financial crisis—both real and imagined!
That is always the challenge—to take our faith from our head (where we acknowledge certain things to be true about God) to our heart (where the truths are the basis on which we live our lives). And so for the past 24 hours, I have been in the process of doing that. I have been crying out to the Lord in prayer; I have been remembering the times past when He has provided in similar situations; I have been looking for signs of His provision in my current situation, while embracing His promise never to forsake me. It is intentional. Faith rarely comes naturally.
Today, if you are in the midst of a crisis, consider it an opportunity to truly live out your faith. God promises to never leave or forsake you. If you believe that in your head, then press it into your heart by intentionally seeking Him, crying out to Him, and trusting Him to take care of whatever needs you have. Faith is truly lived out in the trenches of life where the waters rise and threaten to overwhelm us, and where we live with the certainty that we have a Savior who will rescue us.
© Jim Musser 2015
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