A Promise is A Promise is A Promise: God’s Promises Light Up Our Tunnel!

“Due to the current financial constraints, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off for the foreseeable future!” “With the raising costs of energy and our budget already constrained beyond its reasonable limits, with no desire to enter bankruptcy anytime or ever ….” so reads a notice on a local notice board. 

Someone has deemed it necessary to shut off the light at the end of our tunnel! With no expressed promise the light will ever be turned on again? How does it sound for someone contending for a gold medal in ultimate pessimism? Not one press release extending hope will be forthcoming from anyone in any authority!

Now, who has the right to make such a statement? Who has both of their hands on the switch which permanently shuts off down Tunnel of Hope’s power grid?

Answer is quite obviously – no one! Nobody can take away the power of hope unless you let him.  Hope is as essential to life as oxygen is to your human body.

Yet, how can we find even the slightest evidence of hope in “impossible” times?

Stand in God for He will be with you now and forever. When we are laid low, He is the ONE with the power to stand us up, He watches over you and He shields you. Pray! Do not be afraid for He is the never ending source of your strength.

Job 5:1-11 HCSB

5 Call out if you please. Will anyone answer you?
Which of the holy ones will you turn to?
² For anger kills a fool,
and jealousy slays the gullible.
³ I have seen a fool taking root,
but I immediately pronounced a curse on his home.
⁴ His children are far from safety.
They are crushed at the city gate,
with no one to rescue them.
⁵ The hungry consume his harvest,
even taking it out of the thorns.^[a]
The thirsty^[b] pant for his children’s wealth.
⁶ For distress does not grow out of the soil,
and trouble does not sprout from the ground.
⁷ But mankind is born for trouble
as surely as sparks fly upward.

⁸ However, if I were you, I would appeal to God
and would present my case to Him.
⁹ He does great and unsearchable things,
wonders without number.
¹⁰ He gives rain to the earth
and sends water to the fields.
¹¹ He sets the lowly on high,
and mourners are lifted to safety.

The Word of God for the Children of God. In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

Job’s life has been turned completely upside down and utterly backwards. His children are all “suddenly dead.” All of his vast storehouses of property and wealth have suddenly evaporated. And if things seemingly could not get any worse, his whole body is afflicted by weeping sores and his wife tells him to “just curse God” and go off somewhere all by yourself and end it all and die. From every possible blessing he could hope for to every curse he did not want.

In the twinkling of an eye someone has pulled the switch on the light in Job’s tunnel. At the snap of some finger from somewhere Job could not identify, his very existence was unceremoniously thrown into chaos. He could not identify who it was who had done such a thing without even one warning whatsoever. Now, he is thrown into a situation where he must figure out; “what’s next?” Where does one even begin, aside from “cursing God and dying” to answer it?

Can you hear Job’s Lament across the great expanse of time from his wilderness unto these contemporary times where it seems Covid pandemic has turned off the lights at the end of too many of our tunnels? Where the economics does not yet support giving someone the authority and the power to turn them back on? It is crystal clear that there is nowhere on earth where our tunnels are all lit up at the same time! Do we hear our Lament coming from those darkened tunnels?

Psalm 42

Longing for God!

¹ As a deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for You, God.
² I thirst for God, the living God.
When can I come and appear before God?
³ My tears have been my food day and night,
while all day long people say to me,
“Where is your God?”
⁴ I remember this as I pour out my heart:
how I walked with many,
leading the festive procession to the house of God,
with joyful and thankful shouts.

⁵ Why am I so depressed?
Why this turmoil within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him,
my Savior and my God.
⁶ I^[a] am deeply depressed;
therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan
and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls;
all Your breakers and Your billows have swept over me.
⁸ The Lord will send His faithful love by day;
His song will be with me in the night—
a prayer to the God of my life.

⁹ I will say to God, my rock,
“Why have You forgotten me?
Why must I go about in sorrow
because of the enemy’s oppression?”
¹⁰ My adversaries taunt me,
as if crushing my bones,
while all day long they say to me,
“Where is your God?”
¹¹ Why am I so depressed?
Why this turmoil within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him,
my Savior and my God.

Do you ever ask yourself, “Why am I so down?” “Why should I trust in any of the Promises of God to change anything? Is my answer because God has “failed me?  Has He gone home, and turned off voice mail for a little uncluttered time? 

No–of course not.  Is it because He is powerless to minimally change the angle of trajectory of the circumstances which now greatly trouble you? In effect, my worry says, “God, my problem is bigger than You are.  I’m not sure that You can handle any of this for me, so I guess I am on my own to figure this thing out.” “Why should I even put one ounce of my hope into thinking my God’s hope is by far, way bigger and higher than the depths of my sorrow in my life right now?”

Can anybody turn out the light at the end of the tunnel? Have I given anyone my permission to temporarily or permanently flip the switch on my tunnel of hope? Nope! –but somebody or something can surely stand between me and the light of my Savior Jesus Christ, blocking His radiance throwing shadows everywhere.

And as much or as little as it has happened to you, if it has happened to you or even to someone you have come to love, care a great deal about, there’s only one thing to do: Return to the Promise of Jesus Christ (John 1:1-5)!  Get rid of that pessimism, Pray God and the Holy Spirit directly into that situation. Go straight to the heart of the matter (Joshua 1:1-9).  Push your way past, but get focused on the forever visible light of Jesus Christ at the end of your tunnel.

The first step is making the decision to get on with life and do something about your gloom.  I don’t know who wrote the following which someone gave to me, but I do know I like what the author wrote.  It’s entitled, “Today,” and it goes:

“And only I can determine/ What kind of day it will be./ It can be busy and sunny, laughing/ and gay; or boring and cold, unhappy and gray./ My own state of mind is the determining key,/ For I am only the person I let myself be./ I can be thoughtful and do all I can to help,/ Or be selfish and think just of myself./ I can enjoy what I do and make it seem fun;/ Or gripe and complain and make it hard on someone./ I can be patient with those who may not understand/ Or belittle and hurt them as much as I can./ But, I have faith in myself and/ believe what I say/ And I personally intend to MAKE, GIVE, GOD THE BEST OF TODAY.”

The Psalmists response was the “full throated” determination to yet praise Him whom he called “my Savior and my God.” God did not leave David in any cave of depression and gloom.  He eventually led him back home and to God’s throne.

Job’s response, his own personal affirmation of faith immediately afterwards:

Job 1:20-21 (HCSB)

²⁰ Then Job stood up, tore his robe, and shaved his head.^[a] He fell to the ground and worshiped, ²¹ saying:

Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will leave this life.^[b]
The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.
Praise the name of Yahweh.

To which he would later build upon with,

Job 19:19-27 (HCSB)

¹⁹ All of my best friends^[a] despise me,
and those I love have turned against me.
²⁰ My skin and my flesh cling to my bones;
I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

²¹ Have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy,
for God’s hand has struck me.
²² Why do you persecute me as God does?
Will you never get enough of my flesh?

²³ I wish that my words were written down,
that they were recorded on a scroll
²⁴ or were inscribed in stone forever
by an iron stylus and lead!
²⁵ But I know my living Redeemer,^[b]
and He will stand on the dust^[c] at last.^[d]
26 Even after my skin has been destroyed,^[e]
yet I will see God in^[f] my flesh.
²⁷ I will see Him myself;
my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger.^[g]
My heart longs^[h] within me.

I am convinced that only we ourselves can allow clouds and shadows to obscure the light at the end of our tunnels of hope. Praising God for what He is and what He has done, what HE HAS PROMISED TO DO allows us to realize He is the light at the end of the tunnel and nothing can obscure that when we stay focused on Him. This turns despair to hope–something you and I can learn for ourselves.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Let us now PRAY;

Prayer:  I Have Hope

God, my soul is sad. My heart is hopeless.  I’m frowning within and without. But I know the cure. The crack in my heart can be mended by you. The thirst in my throat can be quenched by you.  How refreshing you are! I spend a few minutes in worship and you will fulfill your promise made to the Psalmist to abundantly replace everything that is missing. You rehydrate my heart. You rehydrate my hope! You replenish my depleted spirit. So I’m telling my soul, “Cheer up!” I’m counseling my heart, “I Have hope!” For you, my God, are all I need and more. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.