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How do I know God is with me? What if this is
all a hoax?
How do you know that is God who is speaking?
The thick and dreadful darkness of doubt. The same darkness you
feel when you sit on a polished pew in a funeral chapel and
listen to the obituary of the one you love more than life.
The same darkness that you feel when you hear the words,
"The tumor is malignant. We have to operate."
The same darkness that falls upon you when you realize you just
lost your temper.. . again.
The same darkness you feel when you realize that the divorce
you never wanted is final.
The same darkness into which Jesus screamed, "My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?"
Appropriate words. For when we doubt, God seems very far
away.
Which is exactly why he chose to draw so near.
Throughout time, though God's people often forgot their
God, God didn't forget them. He kept his word.
God didn't give up. He never gives up. When Joseph was
dropped into a pit by his own brothers, God didn't give up.
When Moses said, "Here I am, send Aaron," God didn't give up.
When the delivered Israelites wanted Egyptian slavery
instead of milk and honey, God didn't give up.
When Aaron was making a false god at the very moment
Moses was with the true God, God didn't give up.
When only two of the ten spies thought the Creator was
powerful enough to deliver the created, God didn't give up.
When Samson whispered to Delilah, when Saul roared after David,
when David schemed against Uriah, God didn't give up.
When God's word lay forgotten and man's idols stood
glistening, God didn't give up.
When the children of Israel were taken into captivity,
God didn't give up.
He could have given up. He could have turned his back. He
could have walked away from the wretched mess, but he didn't.
He didn't give up.
When he became flesh and was the victim of an assassination
attempt before he was two years old, he didn't give up.
When the people from his own home town tried to push him
over a cliff; he didn't give up.
When his brothers ridiculed him, he didn't give up.
When he was accused of blaspheming God by people who
didn't fear God, he didn't give up.
When Peter worshiped him at the supper and cursed him
at the fire, he didn't give up.
When people spat in his face, he didn't spit back. When the bystanders
slapped him, he didn't slap them. When a whip ripped his sides, he
didn't turn and command the awaiting angels to stuff that whip down
that soldier's throat.
And when human hands fastened the divine hands to a cross with
spikes, it wasn't the soldiers who held the hands of Jesus steady.
It was God who held them steady. For those wounded hands
were the same invisible hands that had carried the firepot and the
torch two thousand years earlier. They were the same hands that
had brought light into Abram's thick and dreadful darkness. They
had come to do it again.
So, the next time doubt walks in, escort him out. Out to the hill.
Out to Calvary. Out to the cross where, with holy blood, the hand
that carried the flame wrote the promise, "God would give up his only son
before he'd give up on you."
Max Lucado
Midi: It Is No Secret