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Devotions

A Message to Overwhelmed Believers

David Wilkerson (1931-2011)

Today I want to speak to believers who are overwhelmed by accumulating afflictions. You are not alone. In the psalms, David tells of being nearly crushed by unbearable troubles. “My heart is severely pained within me, and the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling have come upon me, and horror has overwhelmed me” (Psalm 55:4-5, NKJV).

Search the scriptures, and you will not find anyone who speaks more than David about trusting God. No one opened up more about seeking and waiting on the Lord for strength in times of need.

However, a series of deep and painful distresses fell upon David that shook his faith. At one low point, he cried, “All men are liars!” He was speaking from a place of overwhelming pain. At that moment he was filled with despair, and words of encouragement alone weren’t working. He was buckling under an all-out attack on his faith and was looking for an escape. “Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. Indeed, I would wander far off, and remain in the wilderness” (Psalm 55:6-7).

When I speak about being overwhelmed, I know what I speak of. At one point in my life, our daughter Debi had just been operated on for cancer, and our 29-year-old grandson Brandon was undergoing chemotherapy for Stage 4 cancer. David was right when he wrote, “Fearfulness and trembling have come upon me.”

What does the believing child of God do in these overwhelming hours? We do as David did.

“As for me, I will call upon God, and the Lord shall save me. Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, and he shall hear my voice. He has redeemed my soul in peace from the battle that was against me, for there were many against me” (Psalm 55:16-18).

Go to prayer and get into the Lord’s presence. Even if you do it quietly, cry out your pain and ask for peace to come upon you. We must do more than trust. We must stay in God’s Word and pray the promises back to him. Through every trial, my family and I have walked in faith and relied on God’s promises. He is good!

The Invitation into Faith

David Wilkerson (1931-2011)

Faith is a command. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. It is written, “Now the just shall live by faith; but if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him” (Hebrews 10:38, NKJV).

Unbelief is a bottomless pit of fear and discouragement. It begins with fearing what we cannot see. One fear leads to another, then we begin fearing everything present and future. The result is uncontrollable anxiety and despair. This is not a small issue with God. It is a matter of life and death.

Today, if you are tormented by fear, I have a word for you. The opposite of fear is faith, and faith is an invitation to partake of the great goodness of the Lord. I refer you to one of the most encouraging promises in God’s Word. Let it sink deep into your soul.

“Oh, how great is your goodness, which you have laid up for those who fear you, which you have prepared for those who trust in you in the presence of the sons of men! You shall hide them in the secret place of your presence from the plots of man; you shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues” (Psalm 31:19-20).

Hold tight to your faith! God has a bold and glorious promise: “Trust me and I will pour out my goodness upon you. I will hide you in my presence and will not allow strife and fear to overwhelm you.”

It is also written, “Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward” (Hebrews 10:35), and “He who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). The rewards of faith are strength, peace and calm in the storm. God rejoices in our faith, and the decision is ours to make. Right now it is within our power to choose to trust him in our present and future trials.

May God help us all hold fast to our faith. Do not give up. We are too close to the end of the race.

“You are my hiding place; you shall preserve me from trouble; you shall surround me with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with my eye” (Psalm 32:7-8).

The Danger of Unbelief

David Wilkerson (1931-2011)

God has embedded in me a dread of unbelief. This dread is the result of searching the scriptures for examples of the dire consequences of unbelief. I thank him for revealing to me the harm and ruin caused by unbelief. We believers have taken this matter too lightly, thinking that God overlooks the doubt of those facing great affliction and hard times.

I once thought the Lord should cut some slack to those facing dire situations, like the disciples in a sinking ship in a raging storm. “Lord, they were just human and overwhelmed and afraid. It looked hopeless; theirs was just a human response.” Jesus nevertheless reprimanded the disciples’ meager faith.

Yes, there is a time to weep. We are sometimes overwhelmed or grieving, and we cry, “Where are you, Lord?” Our loving Father understands and is deeply moved by our feelings. He wants us to bring our misery to him.

Yet we dare not linger on our fears and passing doubts. We must “trust in the shadow of his wings” (Psalm 91:4, NKJV). God has no pity for unbelief, and the whole of scripture bears this out. It may sound harsh, but he will not accept any excuses. He grants no other option but faith.

Israel was given ten opportunities to trust God during their crises in the desert, and they failed. The consequence of their unbelief was forty years of hopelessness, confusion and grief. That generation was even forbidden to enter the promised land. God calls unbelief evil. “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God” (Hebrews 3:12).

What causes unbelief? In my experience, it is mostly the result of neglecting God’s Word. Faith is impossible without a constant input of scripture and a clinging to the promises. He says to feed daily on his Word, pray with confidence and believe with all your heart that God loves you.

Whatever you are going through, God promises to be with you. Today, take a stand and start trusting. Your unbelief changes nothing, but faith opens the door to deliverance.

“Oh, how great is your goodness, which you have laid up for those who fear you, which you have prepared for those who trust in you in the presence of the sons of men” (Psalm 31:19)!

The Truest Answer to Prayer

Gary Wilkerson

Disappointment with God is a topic dear to my heart. Growing up in a Christian home, I heard many stories about answered prayers. We heard of desperate people calling out to God when it seemed there was no hope. We saw his miraculous healing, deliverance and provision.

Over the years, my faith matured. Our family had experienced hardship, so I understood that prayers aren’t always answered. However, I thought that if I really wanted something or if it was important enough, God would come through for me. He would deliver the goods.

As humans, our view of life is limited. God sees us as eternal souls, and he is moving outside of time and space to accomplish his will in our lives. All we can see is “I want this. I need that right now.” This was my struggle for many years. It’s like I asked God for something, and it didn’t happen, and I thought, “This is not a hard thing for you!” He answered other people’s prayers, so why couldn’t he do this thing for me? I thought there was something wrong with me. There I was, disappointed with both God and myself.

The children of Israel, groaning under slavery in Pharoah’s brutal regime, cried out to God for deliverance. He said, “I’ve heard you, and I’ve answered.” I can only imagine their frustration and disappointment at the slowness of Moses’ arrival. “No, you don’t understand, God. We need help now.” Their faith in their future as God’s chosen people faded, and they lost heart. They didn’t see the faith in God that they were going to need in the decades ahead.

Here is what I remind myself when I begin to shrink into my unbelief: God is working on my inner man during the times of silence. He is changing each of us on the inside, developing patience, endurance, and spiritual muscles. He’s drawing us close and revealing his character. “This is where your focus needs to be right now. Look to me. I am on your side. I’ll get you through this, and you will be stronger.”

When we dwell on disappointment, we miss out on the faith, strength and intimacy with God that adversity brings. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16, ESV).

God’s Purpose in Our Wounds

Tim Dilena

In The Root of the Righteous, A. W. Tozer wrote, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.”

God is smart. He'll tell you what's ahead, but he won’t tell you how you’re going to get there. He gave Joseph a dream where he saw sheaths of wheat in the field bow before his sheath. God showed him what was going to happen but never showed him how he was going to get there. Let’s be real. If God had showed him the process, it wouldn’t have been a dream. It would have been a nightmare.

Let me tell you the three things that God did to prepare Joseph to lead and be second-in-command of a country.

1.    He was going to be betrayed by the closest people in his life.

2.    He was going to be accused of something, and he couldn’t defend himself.

3.    Promises were going to be made to him, and promises were going to be broken.

If God can wound you deeply in your pride and self-sufficiency, he can begin to use you greatly. Here’s two ways that happens.

First, nobody heard Joseph’s side of the story except those of us who are reading it thousands of years later. That’s amazing because we all want to defend ourselves, react from our hurt pride, take control of the situation. Sometimes the greatest lesson that God teaches you in this hard school is to keep your mouth shut. Stop talking about it to every friend who will listen; get off of social media; let God defend you. Genesis 30:33 is a verse that I've lived by, and it says, “My honesty will answer for me later.” Most times, I want my honesty to answer for me now, but the Bible says later.

Second, difficulty is not necessarily directional. This is what I mean: Just because it's difficult doesn't mean that God's will is for you to move on. It's poor providence that you’re supposed to move somewhere else just because where you're at right now is hard. What if difficulties are God deepening something in us? What if God himself has led you to that difficult place? If we’re serious about seeing what God has for us, we will wait in the difficulties, with our wounds, for him teach his lessons to us.

After pastoring an inner-city congregation in Detroit for thirty years, Pastor Tim served at Brooklyn Tabernacle in NYC for five years and pastored in Lafayette, Louisiana, for five years. He became Senior Pastor of Times Square Church in May of 2020.