When you are in the darkest time of your life and the future looks hopeless to you, you must cling on to the promises of God. Satan loves to lie to us that the future is nothing for us but a black hole of hopelessness. I lived in this cloud of delusion for years in my circumstances. I knew God was refining me for my day of salvation, but I was too tormented to wait it out. Once I took it upon myself to "escape" and it cost me my sanity and almost my family if not for the forgiving grace of my husband, Joe. He has always "rescued" me since I was young. He was my "hope" to escape a gap within me of love that he soon filled as a teenager and the hope of someday having a family. A real family, not one riddled with bullets of alcoholism and abuse.
But now it was years later and I was faced with a notion of a future of servanthood and I couldn't bear it. No one understood and I feared for my soul if I took my own life. So I walked away from what I knew was right and did my own thing for a short time, but what I never expected was the spiritual rape that it resulted in. I could not stand not having my Lord by my side when I shoved Him aside to run like Jonah.
When I returned and repented, it was a long road back and here I am 30 years later with a thorn in my side, "a messenger from Satan to buffet me" and feel the pain of the memory of Satan's spiritual rape by believing his lies and acting on them. God delivered me from my circumstance of hopelessness 7 years after my return. I spent 17 years on my knees daily before Hope showed up. I was still meant to learn how
God keeps His promises to never leave us or forsake us, but He give us a choice to walk away. One needs to learn them to claim thoes promises and endure through the Holy Spirit to wait upon the Lord to direct our path to Hope.
Today my youngest daughter of our 6 children, Maria, is in a dark time in her life. She is not much older than I was when my second daughter was massively brain damaged in a car accident at the age of 8 months. The future was a nightmare that led me to believe there are things worse than death for a child. This is one of them. But today, Maria and her husband Dave are on their knees asking God to heal their child of a huge inoperable brain tumor. Maria has much more wisdom at 28 than I had and much more faith that God promises us Hope in Christ, for if we live or die we are IN this for Christ. I hope you will spend the next 30 minutes listening to Maria's encouragement to her church body in South Africa on Hope and Perspective
and grow from it> https://www.podbean.com/media/ share/pb-nengm-8b1c6f