Blessed Assurance
Thursday (October 30)
Blessed Assurance
Psalm 37:23-24
The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD upholds his hand.
During my junior year of college, I had one of those crisis experiences that many Christians have at some point. Doubts swept in like a flood and I felt lost—even angry. A combination of factors led to the breakdown. Part of it was studying philosophy at a deep level and opening my mind to a whirlwind of unanswerable questions. Part of it was watching my blind grandmother suffer in agony with diseases that wouldn’t abate. And part of it was letting sin slowly creep in and erode that sure foundation of faith I’d taken for granted. But I remember telling my now-wife Megan on a walk around the pond that I felt myself running away from God and believed that He’d just let me go for good this time. I really did believe that. But later that night, the Spirit nudged me to go the bottom floor of my dorm where an entire suite was surprisingly vacant, and I locked myself in a bathroom for what turned into an hour of wrestling with the LORD. At first, I talked softly, then began to yell, then began to weep, then I finally threw my hands against the wall and didn’t know what to say. But that’s when I suddenly felt Christ with me—holding me; healing me; forgiving me. I thought of Him crawling bloodied and half-dead up Golgotha’s Mount with my cross on His back, and I became aware that even these little pains and questions and doubts were written in His wounds. That thought thrust me to the floor, and I opened my Bible, and I began reading the first passage that appeared to my eyes. It was Psalm 37:23-24. I reached my hands up to Heaven the way my little one-year-old girl reaches up to me and I cried out in joy, “Thank you, Father! Thank you!” Because here I was—falling, but only deeper into heart of God: running, but only in circles in the palm of His loving hand.
Friend, all our days, from the good ones to the bad ones to the thousand in between, are written in the wounds of our Savior’s triumph.