If Paul and Silas could pray in a dungeon surrounded by misery and pain (Acts 16:25-34), what great circumstance restrains our hearts from reaching out to the healer of hearts?

If Jonah could cry out of the dark place of the deep, inside the belly of a great fish because of his own disobedience (Jonah 2:2), what great darkness is stopping your voice from searching for the one who can bring light?

If Daniel could knowingly endanger his own life and would face a den of lions, still felt the need in himself to pray and give thanks to God (Daniel 6:10), what stops us from doing so even amongst the pressures of life we may be facing?

If our Lord, with everything within Him, prayed until great drops of blood flowed from His brow before the suffering of the cross (Luke 22:44), what great trial hinders you from drawing closer to the one who can see you through the trial and meet you on the other side?

Corrie Ten Boom, remembering the days she and her sister spent in the concentration camp in Germany, recorded in The Hiding Place the words of her dear sister before her death: “There is no pit so deep He is not deeper still,”¹ (Ten Boom, 1971, p.240) showing that God’s love, mercy, strength, and power can penetrate the harshest and most severe of circumstances.

May our hearts continue to reach for Him regardless of the trials we face.

In all the examples, God was there performing His perfect will. Some walked away, while the stories of others ended differently. But even through the worst, God’s name was magnified, and a greater end to their story was birthed.

Do not let what you see today discourage you from seeking the face of the Father. In the good times and the bad, He is still there through it all.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:35-39

Blessings~

¹ Ten Boom, Corrie & Sherrill, Elizabeth and John, 1971 and 1984, 2006. The Hiding Place. Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.