I Can’t Take It Anymore!
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength:” Isaiah 26:3-4
“I can’t take it anymore!” I raged and cried. There were few things in life I had cried out to God more desperately about concerning myself than in previous days, weeks, and months as I called out to Him continually to provide relief, a break, physical help, a reprieve, and, more than anything, to release me and free me from the degree of responsibilities, stress, and challenges I had regarding my ministry’s 13 special needs and senior rescued dogs coupled with all the other aspects of running the ministry without a staff, volunteers, and a barebones budget while dealing with decades-long trials and losses. Just days before, following a tropical storm that passed through my area creating even more challenges and stress, I cried out to people to pray for me as I felt close to a nervous breakdown. I did not stop crying out to the Lord – often with desperate rage, self-pity, complaining, and, ultimately, repentance, before going right back through the same cycle. I had been exhausted for so long, and all this caused more exhaustion. Finally I took a day or so to rest. Did the Lord hear my cries?
The morning I wrote this piece, after a few days away from the computer and the news, I woke to discover my area was under a tropical storm warning, a flash flood watch, and a cyclone statement! Within hours, the yard was already flooded more than during the tropical storm that had just passed through. I had to move the dogs back out of their building which I had cleaned up after it was flooded. I couldn’t use the septic again, and the plumbing only minimally, and the toilet shouldn’t be used at all until the new storm passed. The computer program I use for the tracts and devotionals I write and distribute was broken, I now had yet another dog that couldn’t walk without aid, and nothing in the world around me regarding my circumstances seemed to be easier. It seemed harder!
God had given me four words the week before. Rest. Trust. Love. Wait. I was horrified He wasn’t going to provide what I wanted and felt I so desperately needed. But the Lord ALWAYS knows what’s best.
My testimony that day? I was at PERFECT PEACE. I was resting in Him. Trusting in Him. Loved by Him, in Him, and through Him. Waiting on Him. He had been taking me through a refining fire to perfect His love in me and grow me in His image. He hadn’t given me the relief I wanted. He hadn’t turned the heat down. He had turned it up! Yet I was at peace because I rested knowing through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ I am God’s.
Have you ever felt like you just can’t take it anymore? I didn’t find peace in my circumstances. I found it, and find it, in Christ!