Day 21 – Dark Clouds

Weariness… it creeps on you like rain rolling in. You see dark clouds and a wall of rain from a distance yet the sun is still shining over you. Closer and closer the rain comes and you know that it’s only minutes before you are drenched. Weariness is the same – it doesn’t come quickly and out of the blue.

Weariness is a tool that the devil sometimes uses to overwhelm the believer. Ole slew foot is smart! He works slowly, methodically, making sure that you do not recognize his tactics. He creeps in unaware. By the time the believer is totally weary, he can no longer see the hand of God in his life.

In these beautifully written verses, the Psalmist gives us insight as to what we can do to overcome our weariness.

Give Thanks

We are to thank God for the bad – the good – the uncertainties – for everything! It is hard to be sad when you have the attitude of gratitude. A thankful heart cannot be achieved during trials when all we’re doing is griping and complaining about our lot in life. Our heart is a muscle which needs to be exercised like any muscle. Therefore, exercising our faith and teaching ourselves to be thankful in all things will result in a strong, grateful attitude. It is so important to get a handle on this because whatever condition our heart is in will be revealed by the words we speak.

Practice makes perfect. Starting today, thank God for your trials. You will be conditioning your heart – you will be exercising your faith and making it strong. The Lord says that whatever thoughts we harbor in our hearts will be reflected in our speech. It’s a dead give-away. Whether your trial is chronic illness, financial problems, marital stresses or other relationship problems, thank God for these in your life. When we experience a trial in our lives, it is our opportunity to be trained by God! When we don’t thank Him, our attitude is certainly not open to being taught. God wants to teach us to rest in Him – to draw upon His grace to make it through each day. When we moan and groan, our thoughts couldn’t be any further from the Lord. Thanking him in all things opens our heart to seeing what He wants to teach us. We are then able to glean from the Word and we are ready to accept His direction.

Make Known

Verses 1b and 2b speak of telling others what the Lord has done for us. When we keep His blessings to ourselves, we miss out on opportunities to give glory to God for His goodness and grace. We are to tell others of the trials we have been experiencing and how the God of Glory has brought us through them. This doesn’t mean that you now have center stage and can express every gory detail about the trial. But it does mean that you can generalize and then give every detail about how the Lord is bringing you through. Tell them that He is your light in the very darkest of nights. Give God the glory in all things and He will give you exactly the right amount of grace of each difficult moment of the day – He will sustain you!

Seek Him

Verse 4 encourages us to seek God’s face and His strength. Some trials will never go away. It is at these times that we must accept the fact that we will be living with this trial until the Lord takes us Home. It is those dear believers who need to seek Him and His strength minute by minute. There is nothing this believer can do to make this trial go away. Therefore, it is vital this believer gets his strength from the Father because in his own strength, he will fail. The Heavenly Father never fails!

So dear weary Christian, (1) give thanks in all things, (2) make known to others how God is bringing your through, and (3) seek Him and His strength. His grace is sufficient!

Give thanks with a grateful heart;
Give thanks to the Holy One,
Give thanks because He’s given
Jesus Christ His Son.
And now, let the weak say, “I am strong”
Let the poor say “I am rich”
Because of what the Lord has done for us.
Give thanks!

by Henry Smith