This time of year the days are short, nights are long, and bitter cold temps prevail. Even as I right this temperatures outside have plummeted and the winds have escalated, causing me to pause and carefully weigh the necessity of venturing outside. Enjoying a nice long, relaxing walk is for me just a distant memory or fleeting thought. In fact, spring can almost seem like an eternity away. Will it ever come? Though the signs outside give little indication that spring is on the horizon, we know that it will arrive (though not soon enough for most of us!). And so we hang on and endure the cold, and we patiently wait (or not so patiently) for warmer, more pleasant weather to settle in.
The Christian journey, while amazing and rewarding, can be filled with spiritual winters – where we long for better, more enjoyable days. Perhaps your current spiritual condition mirrors that of the season of winter, the days are short and the nights are forever long. First of all, please know you are not alone. All Christians go through dark, difficult days. Even Paul expressed difficult times in his writings. In 2 Corinthians 1:8b-10 he wrote about the struggle to endure. However, notice where he placed his hope. Also take notice of his reasoning for his hardship. “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us”
You see, his hope was in Christ, and the reason for the difficult season was to create within him a deepening dependency on God. May the Lord use the winters in our lives (both literal and figurative!) to develop within us an ever-increasing dependency on Him.
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