You'll Never Walk Alone

I was talking to the Lord this morning about a situation I’m dealing with that has been a big trial and a challenge for what seems to me to be too long now. It just keeps going on and even when it seems that He’s brought deliverance, something else comes up that seems to bring me right back down again. It would seem that God would deliver me once and for all and that I’d be done with dealing with it by now, and so I had been asking Him why it’s not resolved yet so that I can just move on with my life. He brought to my mind another situation that was very similar that happened before I was born again, and so I asked Him why this why now when I am walking with Him – why isn’t it resolved – why is it the same? If I am walking with Him, wouldn’t you think it would be different? That it would not have happened? Or that if it did happen that the outcome would be resolved in a much easier and more amicable way? And then He reminded me of the time right after I was born again that I started to go through something that was similar and in many ways worse than something that I’d been through before I was born again, and that I’d had the same question for Him then. He reminded me that at that time He’d told me that there are times when we need to walk through the same situations we lived through in the past to know that we are different now because we are walking with Him. The situations may be the same, and the outcome and the experience may not be what we would want them to be, but with Him it is different because He helps us walk through it and the outcome will eventually come out to our benefit because “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

A little over a year and a half ago I was teaching a class and one of the men who was a professional singer sang me a song at the graduation as his gift to me. I remember at the time I was dealing with something difficult, different from what I am dealing with now but still a question of faith. The song he sang was from Rogers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” “When you walk through a storm keep your chin up high, and don’t be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm is a golden sky and the sweet silver song of a lark. Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain, tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown. Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone, you’ll never walk alone.” It is no accident that he sang that song that day and no accident that I remembered it this morning. There are times when even when God is speaking to us clearly through His word, which He has been faithfully doing for me all these long months of struggle and trial, that a word will come through some unexpected place, a voice will speak to us a life giving word of encouragement in a way that we can know it’s a confirmation that we can trust and believe in God’s promises.

I really don’t know how the Lord is going to resolve the situations that I have been facing. I know a little bit because He has told me some of the final outcomes, but when I say I don’t know how He’s going to resolve them, I mean that I have no idea from day to day what is going to happen next. It’s actually something that is true even when we think we know what’s going on and we think we have some control in our lives that we really don’t know and have no control, but there are times when we have the illusion that we can know and we do have control, and one thing that walking with the Lord teaches us is that we don’t. In better days I call it “Adventures With Jesus,” and in weaker moments I just cry out to Him in fear and worry. The place where I know He is trying to bring me to – and where He wants us all to be – is that we don’t have those weaker times and we can just know that no matter what things look like, if He said it, He will do it, and it doesn’t matter how, we just have to know who.

I’m definitely not there yet – I still want to know how, and I wonder and worry and have moments of anxiety and fear – but each time He brings me through something I’m learning how to trust in Him more.  I’m learning that no matter how I feel, I’m not ever walking alone, and when I remember that He’s always with me through every storm I can keep on walking and keep my head held high because I am walking with the One who is “my protector, my glory, and the lifter of my head.” (Psalm 3:3)

Blessings,

Jannie Susan