"TRUST ME IN THE HARD TIMES"

                  "Though he slay me, yet will i hope in him.

                                           Job 13:15

Job was a man who lived more than three thousand years ago. He had a pretty horrible life for a while. All of his children died on the same day. Then he got a horrible skin disease that was so bad, he scratched his sores with broken pottery just to get some relief. And he lost everything he owned.

All Job's friends told him to just curse Me and die. But Job said, "Even if God kills me, I will still trust Him." Job knew that I was good. He also knew that he had done nothing wrong. Job didn't know why he was suffering, and he questioned Me. But Job never gave up on Me.

If you have unanswer questions, that's all right . Someday you will understand everything. But for now please believe that I love you, and don't give up on Me. Trust Me in the hard times.

       CHARLES SPURGEON, the renowned preacher and expositor of the 19th century wrestled with bouts of depression so severe that at times he could not even force himself to get out of bed. While his ministry far overshadowed his depression, it was there, nonetheless. He commented,"There is more in God to cheer you than in your circumstances to depress you."

 He saw beyond the dark nights of his soul to Him who said, "whover follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).

        Another man who also struggled with periods of feeling estrangled from God was Oswald Chambers. Yet when he experienced those dark times he didn't relent, nor did his relationship with God get strained.

        Martin Luther also went through depression. But having been trained to think as a scholastic, striving to understand everything from a human perspective, he abandoned natural reason and held tenaciously to the Word of God, seizing it by faith, refusing to doubt his beliefs or believe His doubts.

        Apart from a settled confidence that what God saying in His word is true, it is almost impossible to survive the dark nights of the soul when you wonder if He is there, and whether or not he cares about you. Unless you can lift your eyes above that which you don't understand to the promises of God's word, you, too, will bacilate and be overwhelmed by times of doubt.

        Condidence in God's Word is the only bulwark against the doubts that chill your soul. As Lidie Edmonds wrote, "My heart is leaning on the Word, the written Word of God; salvation by my Saviour's name, Salvation through His blood; I need no other argument, I need no other plea; it is enough that Jesus died, and that he died for me."