Before I say another word, I need you to do something for me, and for yourself. If the darkness is telling you that ending your life is the answer, it is lying, and lies need to be refused at the door. If you are in immediate danger, stop now and reach for help: call your local emergency services without a moment’s delay. You can also find a listening ear in your own country at
findahelpline.com. Do not try to carry this moment alone. There is no shame in crying out for rescue; God often sends his help through the hands of another. So please, do that now. Your life is precious, and the battle is not yet over. Now, let me sit down beside you.
I can hear the ache in your voice, and it is no small thing. When family and old friends turn against you, when every day presses you down like a cart overloaded with sheaves, the heart can feel as though it has been wrung out and left to dry. You look around and see faces that seem to delight in your pain, they gang up, they laugh, they harass, and your soul cries out, “Where is God? Why is he not here?” You are down to your last dollar, the promised job hangs silent like a mocking echo, and your mind feels as though it is fraying at every edge. In such a place, the thought creeps in that perhaps the Lord has forgotten you. But listen to me: that thought, though it feels so true, is utterly false.
You are not forgotten. Picture, if you will, a mother with her nursing child at her breast. Can she forget the little one who depends on her for every breath? Even if such a thing were possible, and our fallen world sometimes shows mothers who do forget, yet the Lord says to his own, “I will not forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” Think of that! Not written in ink that fades, but engraved, cut into the very flesh of Christ. His wounds are your permanent memorial before the throne of heaven. When the nails went into his hands, they wrote your name into his love forever. So when your feelings scream that God has cast you off, look to those pierced hands and know that he cannot forget you, because you are part of him.
I know it feels otherwise. The pain is so sharp, the loneliness so deep, that you have begun to wonder if your faith itself is a curse. You see others who wear a mask of religion and yet prosper, while you, who truly seek him, are battered. But remember your Master. They hated him without a cause. They plowed long furrows upon his back, and in his darkest hour he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He knows exactly what that taste of desertion is like, not as a sinner deserving of it, but as a Substitute bearing it for you, so that you would never have to bear it alone. And even when he felt forsaken, he did not let go: he still said, “My God.” His faith held fast when the light went out. And because he went through that darkness for you, your darkness is now different. It is not the darkness of being cast off; it is the shadow of a Father’s hand stretched over you for a season, a hand you cannot yet see but that will never let you go.
Your enemy would love for you to believe the lie that all this suffering is a sign that God despises you. But in the kingdom of heaven, things are often upside-down to our eyes. Remember Israel in Egypt: the more they were afflicted, the more they multiplied. The very plots of wicked men were turned, by God’s secret hand, into the means of blessing. That hard bondage made a people strong enough for freedom. So it is with the Lord’s own: he can extract sweetness out of bitter spleen, and cause the wind that was meant to destroy you to blow you into harbor. He does not merely meet evil with good, he takes the evil and forces it to serve his eternal purpose. Your enemies laugh now, but they do not see that every blow they aim at you is, in God’s invisible workshop, being melted down and recast into a crown.
Still, I know your mind is churning like a troubled sea. Anxiety gnaws at you, and you cannot focus. The job that was promised still hasn’t called, and your last dollar seems to have wings. Here is a homely truth I have often held onto: it matters less what is outside you, if all is right within. A ship in deep water is perfectly safe as long as the water stays outside. The danger only begins when the sea gets inside. So now, as best you can, and I know it is hard, let not your heart be troubled. Keep the water out. You say, “But my heart is already sinking!” Then look away from the waves and look to the One who once walked upon them. He is not far from you. He prays for you even now, his great heart full of sympathy, for he was tempted in all points as you are, yet without sin.
Let me tell you something else: the Lord thinks thoughts toward you. Not a few passing thoughts, but a multitude. He counts the hairs on your head; he knows the anxious beat of your heart. You may think, “My thoughts are so dark and low, and God is so high above me, I cannot reach him.” That is true, but his thoughts can reach down to you. They are as much higher than yours as the heavens are above the earth, yet they stoop. He is not a God who wound up the world like a clock and then left it to tick on its own. He is present with you. He is thinking about your job, your money, your persecutors, your breaking heart. And what is more, he has promised: “The Lord will perfect that which concerns me.” Not some of it, but all of it. You may be a tangle of half-finished prayers and trembling hopes, but he is the Finisher of faith. What he has begun in you, he will complete. He does not leave his vessels half-molded on the wheel.
So hold on, dear heart. Your life is not yet at its final chapter. You are being sifted, but Christ prays for you that your faith fail not. The very fact that you still cry out, that you still feel the hurt of God’s seeming absence, proves that his Spirit is at work in you. The dead feel no such pain. You are alive, and the living can yet praise him. One day, perhaps sooner than you think, you will look back on this valley and see that your Lord was with you in it all, engraving you more deeply into his own image.
Let me pray with you now, quietly, as we turn our eyes together to Jesus.
Lord Jesus, you who know what it is to be despised and afflicted, look upon your servant. Underneath the crushing weight, come and be their strength. You have promised that you will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax. Fan their hope back into flame. Make their soul to know, beyond all doubt, that they are engraved on your hands and that nothing can pluck them out. Silence the lying voices that would drive them to despair. Send your peace like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea. And for the enemy that hounds them, be a wall of fire round about. Perfect that which concerns them, we ask, and let them see your goodness in the land of the living. Amen.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
