Life was moving along so perfectly.
Alarmingly perfectly, I thought sometimes — because often, I’d get a sense that it couldn’t last forever.
And it didn’t.
One day, the unthinkable happened — and I found myself reeling in pain.
People who were supposed to always be there for me, people who were supposed to be the ones I could count on, abandoned me and left me reeling.
Someone once said you can’t pick your mountains. Bad things happen to us all, and only God knows which trials each of us will have to endure.
For me, my mountain was more like a cliff: I was standing on top enjoying the breathtaking view when I felt a shove from behind and found myself abruptly plummeting toward the rocks below.
The fall was terrifying.
Excruciating.
I knew this could be the end for me.
And then, mere moments from my demise, just when I should have been hitting rock bottom, I was snapped back from destruction.
Because you know what? There was something my enemy didn’t know: For months now, I’d been preparing for this.
I hadn’t realized it at the time, but I’d been praying. I’d been travailing. I’d been making consecrations to God. I’d been spending more time in His Word.
I’d been building a lifeline for this day when tragedy would fall.
Those moments spent in intense prayer, my hunger for the Word, this love for God that I’d been cultivating in my heart . . . all of these things had been weaving a lifeline, and now, that lifeline had saved me from certain destruction.
Once I realized I would survive, I had to start back up the mountain.
Scaling back up the mountainside has not been easy. Sometimes, I have to take a break and cry. Sometimes I mourn the loss of all that will never be. But even in those broken moments, even in pain . . . my soul sings.
This is peace that passes understanding.
This is joy unspeakable and full of glory.
This is the unfathomable love of my gracious, amazing God!
So many people want to live for God the easy way. They want to say they love Him, but they’ve made no real consecrations in their lives. They’ve made no commitments or changes.
Because “He takes us the way we are,” they say.
And how true this is: He took me the way I was when I was a spiritual mess. But thank God, He didn’t let me stay that way! His grace that brings salvation taught me that I could deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world (Titus 2:11-12).
I didn’t have to stay in a poor spiritual condition; I could consecrate my life to God, separate myself from the world, and live like an overcomer.
And these consecrations are what saved me when worse came to worst.
Like anything in life, you get out of your relationship with God what you put in. When you put your heart, soul, and life into Him — when you really give yourself away to Him — you reap blessings that may very well one day become your saving grace.
Thank you, Lord, for caring enough about us to call us into a deeper relationship with You.
My God, how great You are!
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (II Corinthians 1:3-4).