“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Certainly we do feel this way at times. God seems to be distant and unaware of our struggles or indifferent to them. If he knows the details of our daily struggles so much that "his knowledge is beyond scrutiny", if indeed has has put each of our tears in a bottle and recorded them in his book (see Psalm 56:8), how then can things still be as they are, flawed, broken, and unhealed?
God does want to heal the circumstances of our fallen world. But more than that, he wants to heal us, heart, mind, and strength. Because this is his priority he often does not address the circumstances first. Indeed, the whole of Scripture contains countless examples of individuals who had to first be changed themselves before the Lord could then use them to help his people. Even once they had been elevated to that dignity it remained necessary for them to keep their trust in and reliance on God as the central thing in their lives. Once they slipped into trusting in their circumstances, such as the number of their troops at their command, they often began to fall and to fail, and quickly.
The LORD is the eternal God,
creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint nor grow weary
Our strength is meant to be found, not in ourselves, nor as a confluence of perfect circumstances, but in God. God often leaves the circumstances opposed to us, even overwhelmingly so, just so that his strength and his victory might be made manifest in us.
He gives strength to the fainting;
for the weak he makes vigor abound.
Though young men faint and grow weary,
and youths stagger and fall,
They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength,
they will soar as with eagles’ wings;
They will run and not grow weary,
walk and not grow faint.
When we try to force things and fix them by our own effort we will feel heavily burdened by our labor because we were never meant to make these efforts alone.
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
We come to Jesus, not to stop working and rest in some state of bliss cut off from reality, but to undertake our work with the shared yoke of his strength. His strength is so superabundant that when we do avail ourselves of it even the hardest battles can feel like rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
How do we avail ourselves of his strength? How do we enter into his rest? We come to him with our labor and burdens. We seek to do each difficult thing before us more and more with the awareness of his help. We make every request known to him so he can guard our hearts with his peace (see Philippians 4:6). We praise him and thank him constantly so that the enemy can never fool us into believing that we are abandoned.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
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