Climbing Out Of The Pit

As you walk with the Lord you go through seasons of intense intimacy as well as other seasons of distance and discouragement. God is Lord over both seasons. There are times when you win victory after victory as you scale the summit of your circumstances. There are those other times when you find yourself in the pit of destruction bogged down by the miry clay.

I suspect there are many reading this who find themselves in the pit. For some you have been there for a long time. Other attempts to get out have not been fruitful. Though you are weary of the pit you are growing more comfortable there. The effort to climb out seems too much to try again and fail and the walls seem impossible to scale.

If you are one those people I have a scripture for you. I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay; and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. [Ps 40:1-2]

In this passage there are things we are supposed to do diligently. First, we are to wait on the Lord. More than that we are to wait on the Lord patiently. That means to look expectantly toward the future. But what if you have been in the pit of destruction for as long as you can remember. In the past you did wait looking with expectation for God to help you out and He did not rescue you. After awhile it became easier not to expect deliverance and you learned to cope with life in the pit of destruction. You made the best of your misery. That became easier to cope with than the constant disappointment of God not rescuing you.

God challenges those in the pit to not only wait but to wait patiently. This will require endurance and perseverance. A person has to stay spiritually and mentally strong to wait patiently. The only way to do this is to transform your mind with the word of God as you meditate on it day in and day out. I think of Joseph enduring years in slavery and imprisoned in a dungeon. I think of faithful servants like John Bunyan in prison and writing the classic book Pilgrim's Progress. I am reminded of Bonhoeffer, also imprisoned, in Nazi Germany but using that time to write books that still touch and challenge people. .

The next thing we are called to do is to cry out to God. We unload the anguish in our hearts. We cast our burdens on the Lord in fervent faith filled praying. [Ps 55:22] Even when we have already done that more times than we can count. We ask. We seek. We knock. We keep asking. We keep seeking. We keep knocking. We cry out to God in faith over and over again. We keep waiting and believing God will bring us out of the pit eventually. He will enable us to climb out one day. It might not be this day or tomorrow but one day we will grip the edge and climb out to a new beginning. We look to that day.

Now what does God promise to do for us. First, He inclines to hear those anguished cries. That means He the superior stoops down to pay attention to us the inferior. Some of you might reason, "If He is listening why doesn't He do something? Why doesn't He bring me out like I have pleaded repeatedly?"

While I may not be able to give a satisfactory answer to those questions, I do trust that while God may be silent that does not mean that He is absent. He listens. He pays attention. In His perfect time He will act. In God's timing David was delivered from the pit of destruction. God brought Him out. A new day dawned. He was set free. David lived to see better days.

From the pit all you can see are the walls around you. You lose perspective. Inside the pit there is pain, depression, hopelessness, frustration, and doubt. Outside the pit there is joy, hope, peace, and faith. We are not meant to live in the pit forever.

Here is a sad truth. Some of us are in the pit of destruction due to consequences of our own choosing. We sinned. We decided. We walked down the path God forbid. We sowed to the wind and we reaped the whirlwind in the pit of destruction. If you are in the pit for that reason I thank God His grace is sufficient. His grace is greater than our sin. There is forgiveness. There are second chances.

Others are in the pit because of the sinful choices of others. God can be trusted to be a very present help for us in those times. He does not abandon us even when we are in the pit we did not choose but someone chose for us. He is our strength and refuge.

There are other times we find ourselves in the pit for testing and character development. I praise God those painful lessons do not last forever. Once we have learned what we need for God's next assignment He will bring us out of the pit.

For those in the pit you will not remain there forever. Take hope in that truth. The day will come when after painful sobbing prayers have been lifted you will feel the hand of God grip you firmly and pull you out. He will put your feet on firm ground once again. That is the day we look for. Some of us may not feel and experience that until God lifts us from this life into eternity. One moment in eternity will make us forget the long days in the pit. For most of us the deliverance from the pit will come sooner. Both will be  a day of celebration. Either celebration in eternity or celebration in the here and now. That will be a day of rejoicing. One day God will help us climb out of the pit. Let us wait patiently for that day.