Day One: God Is With Us, Even If It’s Dark

"Even If" Verse 1:

I’m being honest, this is the hardest

the hardest song my heart will sing

My words are broken, my dream is stolen

How do I say what I don’t mean

You don’t owe me anything

But in my darkness you still speak peace

In times of struggle and heartache, when our prayers seem to go unanswered, it can be easy to ask the question, “God are you even listening?” We pour out our hearts begging and pleading for the situation to change, and sometimes it feels as if our prayers have gone unanswered.

Where are you, God?

Pain, especially when rooted in our emotions, can be overwhelming and isolating. It has a way of binding our hands and weakening our faith. My family knows this feeling well. In a few short years, we lost more than eight family members, including my mother, Dr. Lois Evans. Those situations came, wave after wave, crashing over us, over me. As life-altering as those situations were, that season pushed me to come to God. I begged God for a specific outcome, but every time my prayer wasn’t answered the way that I wanted it to, I was faced with pivotal questions:

“Will I worship him in spite of this?”

“Is He still good in the midst of this heartache?”

You’re not alone. My family isn’t the first to go through a season we wished God could just make go away. Even Jesus struggled with the burden he was asked to carry. In the gospels, we find Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane wrestling with the reality that he was about to be crucified on the cross for the sins of the world. Praying, He says

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be

done.”

Jesus begged for “the cup,” or his ultimate fate, to be taken from him, even though he knew it could not. This divine moment reveals to us two things:

God is with us.
God knows that sometimes, what we carry can be too heavy for us to bear alone. Yet, he chooses not to abandon us when life gets hard. Even if he doesn’t remove the proverbial “cup” from our lives, he promises to be with us. He is big enough and His love is wide enough to carry our greatest emotions without compromising His character.

Jesus is praying for us.
Hebrews 4 reminds us that Jesus understands and empathizes with the pain we carry and that He is praying for us. Jesus knows suffering well and has overcome it; not by avoiding it, but by defeating it. In Him, we receive the power and strength we need to endure; the power we need to believe that He is still good.We can rest knowing that His prayers for us are tailored to our needs and that His presence will empower us on each step of the journey.

For the next 4 days, join me on a journey, anchoring ourselves in God’s presence, through his word, as we align our sights and ourselves with the truth that we are not alone in our darkest moments. God is with us!