Sometimes you’re in the valley. . .

Hope in expectancy:

I have had times where I have asked, “Why am I here?”

There are two different issues—one, to know, “God is with me,” and another being the reality that, “I am with God.”

There are times where we know God is with us, that God is with us in our weakness (see 2 Corinthians 12:9, Where Paul quotes what God has said to him, “My power is made perfect in weakness.”).

Think of the times saints of old have experienced God being with them in jail, for example, like John Bunyan and the classic he penned, Pilgrim’s Progress, while serving time in jail for boldly preaching the gospel.

I wrote this prayer while being in a place I did not want to be, but it represents my lifting up my soul to God and seeing Him with me in my weakness. . . .

Valley Prayer

Here in this valley, here in this desert, I’m missing my friends, missing what’s familiar . . .

But now I’m looking to You, now I’m hoping,

Now I’m trusting in You. . . .

I will wait till You renew me. . . .

Those who never hunger, never get their hunger rewarded.

Here in this desert I find You word: You speak to me;

I am a “captive audience.”

Here all else is apart from me;

But now I’m listening to Your word, Your call. . . .

I long to see the mountain heights again—

The sun reflecting off the snowy peaks. . . .

But I am here now and I know You can see me,

And that is enough.

 

There are times God asks us, “if we are with Him?” This is extraordinarily told in the book of Joshua 5:14-15. Before going to fight for the Promised Land, Joshua encounters a man who says he is not with the Israelites or with their enemies; rather He says He is captain of the Lord of Hosts.