Devotions by Christine Caine - Undaunted

Devotions by Christine Caine - Undaunted
Read
Isaiah 55:8–9

God reminds us that his thoughts, choices, and intents are far superior to 
our own. Our humanness limits what we can see and know, but he sees and 
knows
everything.

Surviving Disappointment

Disappointment is a sad and terribly lonely place. We all land there at some 
point in life. Our children move away and never call. Colleagues betray us.
The company to which we’ve devoted our years “downsizes,” and we’re on the 
layoff list right along with the newcomer and the slacker. The man we love 
doesn’t
love us back. The perfect child we dream about and tend in pregnancy is born 
with defects that will make the rest of our lives, and all our family 
members’
lives, nothing less than challenging. We get a disease or suffer an injury 
for which there is no relief or cure. Our investments dwindle. Friends 
disappear.
The one we’ve prayed to find Jesus never does. Our dreams shatter, and our 
best-laid plans go astray. Other Christians fail us. People disappoint us. 
We
even disappoint ourselves.

The long series of disappointments we accumulate in a lifetime can stop us 
from moving forward into all the goodness God has planned for us—and that 
means
they’ll be stopping not only us but also those God has destined us to reach 
along our life’s journey. After all, how can anyone stuck in their own 
disappointment
help others out of theirs? How can we convince others of the wonder of God’s 
promises if we doubt them ourselves? How can we share how God has saved us
when we don’t feel saved at all?

Why is it that we can know in our heads that God has our good in mind and 
that he can redeem any and every circumstance, and yet we can still feel 
hugely
disappointed and deeply despondent? Our heads tell us God is trustworthy—but 
in a moment of aching disappointment, our hearts tell us he’s not even 
there.

In these places of deep disappointment, we must remind ourselves of those 
things about God that we know to be true, though they might not feel true at
the moment. We must conclude for ourselves that the valley of death we are 
walking through isn’t, to borrow an image from Pilgrim’s Progress, a Slough
of Despond from which we would never emerge, but simply a shadow, and that 
shadow does not define our lives. Christ does.

There is so much we don’t know. But we do know this: If we are to accept the 
disappointments that we cannot escape in life, we must turn to God’s Word
for hope and encouragement.

Point to Ponder

God knows things we don’t know, and does things in ways we could never 
predict. He is infinite, and we are finite. In good times and bad, we must 
trust
him to know what is best for us.

Undaunted by Christine Caine
Today's reading is adapted from Undaunted
or The Core Issue
by Christine Caine