Have you ever been in a hopeless situation? I mean, you feel totally boxed in, with no way out. Perhaps you've just heard a doctor's report on your physical condition. Or perhaps you feel trapped in fear, anxiety and depression. Furthermore, you are tired of fighting and you don't have an ounce of strength left to fight. Your faith feels feeble at best. And all around you are your Christian friends telling you, "Just have faith." (I've been guilty of that more than once.) You try to read the Bible, but it seems to be full of faith heroes conquering kingdoms and shutting the mouths of lions. Somehow you just feel disqualified. Let me encourage you, my brother, my sister. YOU ARE A CANDIDATE FOR A MIRACLE. The Bible describes plenty of situations just like this, and how people cried out to God and were delivered. Certainly it is good to know the steps of exercising your faith, and I have even taught on this. But you may have reached the point where you realize that your house may be built on sinking sand, and you don't have time to go to ten faith seminars and seven faith conventions. You need help and you need it right now. I take comfort from certain Scriptures describing people in impossible situations. Take Hezekiah, for example. The prophet of God has just told him that he is about to die and to put his house in order. What if God's prophet, Isaiah no less, told you that you were about to die? That would seem pretty hopeless. Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord and put God in remembrance of how he had walked before God uprightly. In a divine turnaround, God healed him and gave him 15 more years of life. You can read about it in Isaiah 38. But you might be saying, "That's all well and good for someone who has been walking uprightly with the Lord with his whole heart, but what about ME. God knows I have made plenty of mistakes and have failed Him so many times. What right have I to plead my case before Him?" Let me tell you the good news, my beloved friend. You don't have to approach God based on your OWN righteousness and performance. We have something up on Hezekiah. We have the blood of Jesus. We can approach God as if our sin had never existed, because Jesus has become our substitute.
Let me give you another scripture to hang on to. Turn to Psalm 107 and read the whole thing. In one place it says, "There were those who dwelt in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in misery and chains, because they had rebelled against the words of God, and spurned the counsel of the Most High...they stumbled and there was none to help. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble; He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke their bands apart." Here are people who have been rebellious toward God and got themselves into hot water. Surely it may seem like they don't have a leg to stand on with God. And yet the Bible says that God was merciful and heard their cry, and delivered them. Later on in the same chapter, it says, "Fools, because of their iniquities were afflicted...then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble; He saved them out of their distresses. He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them." So even if you have been the fool, God is still merciful, if you will cry out to Him. And in your crying out to God, that really is simply your faith in the mercy of God going into operation.
God is a good God. Psalm 145 says that "God is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works...the Lord sustains all who fall, and raises up all who are bowed down....the Lord is near to all who call upon Him...in truth."
So there is hope for you. You have a great big loving Heavenly Father to call upon in trouble. One who is as near as your faintest whispered cry in the middle of the night.
@ copyright 1995 by Scott H. Northrup. All rights reserved.