Finding Hope in the Holiday season

​That you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. Luke 1:4

If we are honest, I think all of us have had moments when we have wrestled with our faith. Like Jacob, we have struggled through the night with doubts about God’s love, presence or provision. We may have wondered “why me” more than we care to admit. Maybe, hardships and disillusionment have exhausted us causing us to become worn out and weary desperately seeking a tangible touch from God.   
​
Likewise, the people of God had been waiting a long time for the promised Messiah. After ten generations of suffering, hardships, persecution, disappointments, and most of all silence, they had to be tired. Maybe even hopeless. I imagine in the quiet moments in the dark, doubts must have swirled around them like dust caught in the wind. Questions probably bubbled to the surface about what they had been taught for generations. Rising and falling like labored breath. True? Not true? Cares? Doesn’t care? Coming? Not coming?

Doubts are like that. They rise and fall with the tide of our circumstances. The longer the hardships last, the deeper the doubts grow.

But, in the midst of the darkness, in the deepest part of our darkest doubt, God is there. Waiting. Listening. Holding. Loving.
​
God never discounts our doubts nor dismisses them. Instead, God wrangles our doubts, untangles them, ties them up, and sets us free. He uses our struggles of faith to build a stronger faith within us. He loves us enough to allow us to wrestle until Truth becomes our own.

One of the great patriarchs of our faith wrestled with his faith as well. The story of Jacob wrestling all night with the Lord is outlined in the book of Genesis and stands as an example for all of us. In the end, Jacob walked away from his midnight tussle of trust a new person. He walked away with a limp, a blessing and a new name.  His encountered changed him.  He started with doubts but left convinced of his faith and committed to his God. We can experience the same thing too.

Friends, we all struggle at times to understand the hardships happening around us. In Isaiah 55:8-9 God states, “For my thoughts are not your, thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (ESV). The comfort I see in these verses is hearing that I don’t have to know it all. God already knows we don’t “get it”. Therefore, we don’t have to be ashamed to question, test, and rethink our faith. He knows we struggle. He can handle our questions, doubts, fears and anger. Besides, He knows all of it already.
​
However, the one truth we need to cling to, even if everything else is topsy-turvy, is that God loves us. God loves us so much “…that he gave his only Son, what whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” John 3:16 ESV. You can be unsettled about many things but Jesus is the one thing upon which you can rest assured.
​
As we enter this Christmas season and start to decorate, let’s take time to slow down and see the evidence of God’s love, presence and provision in our lives. Let’s let Luke’s words in chapter one verse four, “that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught” inspire us to use all of the Christmas festivities surrounding us to strengthen our faith. Faith in the fact that Jesus is the ultimate evidence of God’s love, presence and provision in our lives. 

---