Any battle you are facing, if you are hanging on to Jesus, He’ll bring you out. It may last for days, months, sometimes even years; you might get tired, hurt, exhausted, and just about to give up hope… God said, “I will even make a road in the wilderness.” (Isaiah 43:19) It really is a miracle to have a road in a middle of your desert, but He is able to do it. Don’t stop believing until you find your “road,” your way out. Seek God with all your heart. No matter the heartache or the pain you are experiencing, He wants to be the one to bring you out. God wants us to find peace even in the storm. The end to your pain will come, it’s just a matter of time. I had never felt as close to God as I felt during my wilderness. He was all I had, and I clung to Him.
This scripture comforted and brought me hope so many times throughout my journey. I kept reminding myself that God has a way out of what ever I was going through at the time.
He will miraculously rescue and pull you out of your desperate times. Sometimes I asked Him, “God, you helped me out of that one, but how are you going to get me out of this one?” Things looked impossible, but that’s the kind of business God operates the best. He rarely works same way twice.
His ultimate desire is to teach us to trust Him in everything in our life. God knows that when we understand this truth true peace, freedom, and joy will start dwelling in our hearts. We become fearless weapons in God’s kingdom. It’s hard, but it’s well worth it.
The situations and struggles that come our way are many times different, so the method of breakthrough will be different also. He never ceases to amaze me. He came through and delivered me or the children time and time again. Situations that looked impossible a year ago suddenly were happening right in front of my eyes. He was making good on the things that He had promised me. Things took unexpected turns, sometimes very painful ones, but the end result was fulfilled promise. Trust God even in the pain. You won’t be disappointed.
My wilderness lasted longer than I ever expected, and as I write this, it’s still going on in some way. You see, we don’t often control how long our difficulties last, but we can control our attitude while we go through it. Be aware that sometimes we unfortunately can prolong our own suffering… I fought God, asking Him many times, “How long is this going to last, and when is this going to end?” My trial was painful and hopeless to go through it with this mindset until I realized that in each difficulty God was teaching me something about His character — who He really is and what He wanted to do in my life. He was teaching me to trust Him. A lot of what you are going through has everything to do what God wants to reveal to you.
Some of the prolonged pains I was having were a direct result of my failure to obey what God was telling me to do at that point.
Obedience is a key of finding our “way out”!
When I let go of things, followed His voice, and did sometimes-hard things — scary, painful things — there was soon a shift in the way God moved things forward. Seek God and find out what hard thing, breaking, or lesson is there to be learned in your wilderness. You see, God uses everything that happens in our life to bring glory to His name. Don’t think for a second that this life is about you or me. It’s not. It’s about God and His honor. Think about it — whose honor is at hand when the evil prevails in your life? He has promised in His word to bring you and your family out. God cannot deny himself. He is a sovereign God; His ways are higher than our ways, so don’t even try to make sense of everything that’s happening to you. Many times it makes no sense right. Just trust Him in the process.
This lesson became clear to me one summer night in August 2017. I was visiting my parents in Finland. Because of the midnight sun in Finland, it was only dusk. It had been almost three years since my battle to freedom started. This night I had had it… I left the house at 12 am to go for a talk with God… I was mad. Really mad. I walked to the railway and sat there on top of some tree trunks that were waiting to be hauled away. I cried, yelled, prayed, and cried and yelled some more. I was so mad that God knew the truth of what had happened to us, yet He was not exonerating me. He was allowing my ex-husband to flourish. He was still going about twisting the truth, preaching and speaking lies about me. I said to God, “Where is my honor, and when are people going to see the truth?? This is so unfair to me. How am I going to be anything in Your Kingdom if you are not going to set things right… Then it hit me. Me. My. I. What a fool have I been…Then God gently spoke to my heart, “Your honor? As long as you think this is about you, nothing will happen. When you get that this is about My honor instead of yours, your victory is just around the corner.” Ouch. It was time to repent. It was time to ugly cry. “Lord this is not about me, it’s about you. I am so sorry for being selfish, thinking that I am someone who deserved any honor. I don’t. I trust you fully that my time to come out will come.” One week after this encounter, I received a call that changed a lot of things. And later I received a court document stating that the judge had ruled in my favor. The document was dated exactly one week after my surrender. Only God.
God will sustain you in your desert. “I will even make… rivers in the desert,” says Isaiah 43:19. He will feed you, give you hope, give you a word, and just enough to sustain you for that day. That’s why you live in today. Don’t worry about tomorrow. “His mercies are new every morning.” (Lamentations 3:22) Breathe in and breathe out. Your life is fully in God’s hand.
Your struggle will be the one thing that will make you who God made you to be!
Brokenness to Beauty 