What do your students think about when they think about God? The longer I am in…
What if the answer is no? What if that question you have been asking, the thing you have been begging God to do, the deepest longing that you have from God is answered with…no?
At a recent high school graduation I attended, it was said during the valedictorian address:
“Pain is temporary. It may last for a moment, a day, a week, month, or even a year, but eventually it goes away and is replaced by something else.”
Now to be fair, from an eternal perspective, for the believer this is absolutely true. And yes I know that “God causes all things to work together for the good of those who are called according to His purpose.
This however, that was not the context of the comment. It was well-meaning, and inspiring for sure. As a graduating senior, most can only imagine the pain and difficulty life may bring. It is difficult for any of us to fathom the depths of pain that can come our way.
You may have been there before. You may be in the midst of pain, difficulty, or uncertainty now. You may have found yourself for sometime now praying, hoping, begging God. What if the answer is no? What if the pain doesn’t go away. What if the struggle continues?
Maybe the better question is this:
If the answer is no, will you still trust Him? Will you look deep within the unmatched beauty of a gracious, loving, merciful Savior and find Him alone as enough?
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as i walk down this path. I am trying to wrestle with whether God is saying No to me or not yet? It is still the most difficult thing to say i trust your sovereignty even when I feel like I have been abandoned.
Matthew, thanks for your honesty. I really think that a lot of people can relate. Sometimes it is difficult to see further down the trail. Our tendency is to look at and become focused on what is right in front of us. I’ve found that looking back to God’s faithfulness in the past helps me stay the course when uncertainty is ahead. At the end of it all, we are walking in trust to what we do not know. Some circumstances just seem to make it more painfully obvious than others. Stay the course Matthew. You are right now, exactly where He has placed you.