Take a moment and reflect on a circumstance in your life that is crumbling all around you. This crumbling is beyond your control, like a sand castle being battered by the rising tide. You’ve tried reassembling the pieces and putting them into their desired shape, but the sand continues to slip through your fingers as the castle dissolves and washes away into the ocean’s abyss.
Our Battered Sand Castles
Take a moment and reflect on a circumstance in your life that is crumbling all around you. This crumbling is beyond your control, like a sand castle being battered by the rising tide. You’ve tried reassembling the pieces and putting them into their desired shape, but the sand continues to slip through your fingers as the castle dissolves and washes away into the ocean’s abyss.
Ep. 62 Noah’s Story Part 2: Depression
In this episode, he talks about his journey and struggle with depression
Psalm 40 Devotional – Victory & Suffering, Hand in Hand
Psalm 40 shows us that we can confidently approach God in our time of need, and that we can continue to worship and rejoice in him, even when our circumstances would indicate otherwise. It also sets a clear pattern that God doesn’t always tie things up in a perfect, red bow at the end. It doesn’t promise that “all who want to take my life be put to shame and confusion.” That prayer is prayed, but as far as we know, those attempted murderers are still on the prowl. What it does promise is we can go to God as our refuge and strength in the midst of this.
Psalm 35 Devotional – Continued Praise Under Continued Pain
We love these pretty red bows in our contemporary sermons and ideas of prayer. But the psalm does not stop here. The transition from verse 10 to 11 feels like taking a stick shift automobile from 5th gear to 2nd. One minute the psalmist is extolling God for rescuing the poor from their oppressor, the next he is writing about his ongoing, brutal oppression. Verses 1-10 paint the picture that God has throttled the oppressors and the poor (and the psalmist, written as one of the poor) are free. Verses 11 and following take us down the dark road of the real, daily, in-your-face oppression that the psalmist is still currently under.
Psalm 21 Devotional – Remember God’s Victories When Life is Bleak
We are a “What have you done for me lately?” culture. A football coach will win the Super Bowl, then get fired two years later. A star player has a breakout year and signs a huge contract, only to get cut or traded when his production falls off or is beset by injury. “What have you done for me lately?” is the engine that drives our culture’s romantic relationships today. People hop from boyfriend to boyfriend or girlfriend to girlfriend because the initial shine has worn off and the butterflies have fallen asleep, but there’s a new shiny person that has entered life who offers these things again. People change out of sexual relationships today as easily as they change outfits. It’s no surprise that we treat God the same way.