Unfailing Love

“But I trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me.” – Psalm 13:5

If you’ve walked with the Lord for any length of time, you’ve probably experienced a crisis of belief; a season of life when the Lord doesn’t act according to what we believe to be true about Him. We believe God is close, but this week He seems far away. We believe that God speaks to us, but right now He seems awfully quiet. We believe God will ultimately win but it seems like the enemy is winning right now. We believe but we have some doubts.

Living by faith is difficult. We all struggle every day to remember, believe, and make choices based on God’s Word and His promises to us in Christ. Words on a page can feel powerless when painful circumstances don’t change. To make matters worse, it feels like we’re all alone. No one could possibly understand what we’re going through. So, we keep things hidden, maintaining a brave facade. But below the facade is turmoil. So how do we nurture belief in difficult circumstances?

Scripture gives us testimony after testimony of people who had overwhelming evidence to trust God but still chose unbelief. The Israelites saw God perform over a dozen miracles rescuing them from Egypt, culminating in the parting of the Red Sea. And yet, in a matter of days, they doubted God’s ability or desire to keep them alive in the wilderness.

David is an example of that. In Psalm 13, David finds himself in the middle of a crisis of belief. “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” (Psalm 13:1-2) David is tired of waiting for God to show up. He’s begging for an “answer” and fears that his enemies will rejoice when he “falls” (Psalm 13:3-4).

But…just when we think David is about to quit, things change. Even though he has reasons to call it quits, He makes a fundamental choice: He decides to keep resolutely trusting the Lord’s “unfailing love” (Psalm 13:5). Trust is not centered around our feelings or our particular circumstances, it is based in the character of God. And even during a crisis of belief, we should continue to trust in who God is, and what He tells us in His word.

Although David isn’t experiencing much goodness in his present, He calls to mind the goodness of God in his past. “I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.” (Psalm 13:6) The question is will we continue to trust in spite of our circumstances or how we feel at the moment? If you continue to trust you will survive your crisis of unbelief.

So, how about you? Will you choose to continue to trust in spite of how you feel? Will you follow David’s example and survive your crisis of belief?