Problems pile on until life feels more like a grave than renewed life, and we wonder where God is. The Book of Ruth opens with Naomi back from Moab empty and bitter, renaming herself Mara because the Almighty has dealt harshly with her—still certain God is King, yet unable to see whether that King still loves her. Is there hope when we find ourselves feeling the same way?
When something’s keeping you up at night—an unexpected bill, a looming deadline, a need you can’t see your way through—it’s easy to wonder whether those worries are too ordinary to bring to God. Jesus is clear in the next part of the Lord’s Prayer that simply isn’t the case.
What happens when the life you planned collapses and your worst failure seems to have settled what you can ever become? Exodus 3–4 brings that question to Moses, a fugitive tending sheep in the wilderness, when the holy God calls him from a burning bush and sends him toward the people and place he fled.
When you’re in a wilderness season—the kind that doesn’t feel like a season at all—the doubt that creeps in isn’t usually about theology; it’s simpler and sharper than that: *Is God really with me?* That’s precisely the question hanging over Exodus 3, where God meets Moses in the wilderness and answers it not with reassurance alone, but with His name.
Most of our days do not feel like turning points in history; they feel like errands, obligations, and familiar routines, leaving us to wonder whether our lives matter in any story beyond our own. Those on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in Acts 2 might have wondered the same thing.
Why does it seem like we declare God’s victory, and yet it often doesn’t feel very victorious? When Christmas joy collides with year-end weariness and plans that never quite landed, Revelation 12 can help us better understand where that elusive victory really is.
Pastor Tim continues our series “the Temptations,” looking at how we are all tempted to misuse God’s faithfulness and what God calls us to do to avoid that.
