Welcome to the Faith Deployed...Again online book club, Day 16! (Not sure what this is all about? Click here.)
In Your Book: Before we begin, please turn in your copy of Faith Deployed...Again to page 212 and read "Seeing in the Dark" by Jocelyn Green. (If you don't have a book, don't go away! We'd love to have you join us for this discussion anyway!) Now Let's Talk: Today's discussion is led by Jocelyn Green. In the devotion you just read, I shared the story of a Marine wife who once felt so in the dark, unable to get her bearings or see any light at the end of the tunnel. For her, the cause was her husband's PTSD and TBI. For others, a similar feeling could be caused by any number of other situations. Singer/songwriter Sara Groves has a great song on her Fireflies album called "From this one place." If you have a few minutes, you can listen to it here:
I love the chorus:
“From this one place I can’t see very far/ In this one moment I’m square in the dark/These are the things I will trust in my heart/ You can see something else”
[Tweet "I can't see very far, but God can."] Does this sound like something you have said or felt before? If we haven’t been in that place yet, I’m pretty confident that it’s only a matter of time before we are there too. But the comfort comes in knowing that while we can’t see much from our point of view right now, God sees it all. He sees the big picture, and as Sara says in her song, He “can see something else.” Just like Jesus knew what Mary and Martha didn't: that Jesus chose not to heal their brother Lazarus not because he was careless or mean, but because he knew that it would bring greater glory to God to raise him from the dead instead! (Read about this in John chapter 11.) Oh how we long to know what it is that God sees that we can’t! But if we could see it all at once, we wouldn’t have to trust Him, either. And I believe God wants to use the dark times of our lives to build our relationship with Him. In our darkest hours, it’s what we believe about God’s character that will sustain us. Do we believe that He is sovereign and in control? Do we believe that He is trustworthy? Our answers to these questions are more important than knowing the answers about what tomorrow will hold. I absolutely love what Carolyn Custis James says in her book When Life and Beliefs Collide:
“God’s character is crucial, for there are moments in life when God’s goodness and love seem to come under a blackout. No matter how we strain our eyes, we cannot see any good, not a trace of God’s love . . . When faith cannot find something tangible to grasp, we are compelled to fly back to the ark of God’s unchanging, unfailing character. But faith will not find much of a foothold here if God is a stranger to us. Faith, in the final analysis, is trusting someone you know, even when you don’t always understand what he is doing” (page 73).
In a devotion titled “Faith Challenged” in Faith Deployed (the prequel to Faith Deployed...Again), Army wife Rebekah Benimoff shares this:
“When a young lady who once served on the chapel praise team with me learned that her husband had been killed in Iraq, those of us who served with her were shaken. while some people I knew were certain that God had told them everything would be okay, I had no such assurance. What God told me was quite different. He said that no matter what happens, He would carry me through. And to this day, He has” (page 216).
Rebekah was in the dark about her husband’s future, and about her future with him–as all of us are. But she learned to put her hope in the One who is Light Himself. If you feel in the dark right now, trust that God still sees. He cares. And He has a plan for you. Discuss: What do you feel most in the dark about right now? How are you trusting God through this time? Share with us a time when you emerged from your dark period and finally saw what God was doing during that difficult time. What did God teach you through it?
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