Trusting Him in the dark...

Today is one of those days when I have to shut myself off to human feelings and rely completely on the fact that if the Lord says something to me it is true. I often think of my dad talking how a pilot must learn to trust his instrument panel and not his feelings if he gets disoriented while flying.
Sometimes the events of life are crushing to our emotions. Emotions are just as much a part of our depraved humanity as the body of flesh and bones or the mind. They can get wounded or damaged and when that happens we must lean with all our might on the words of our Beloved Saviour. If He says He is with me always, He is- rather I can sense His presence or not.
One of my favorite verses that the Lord gave me through my years of depression was this, -"Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath not light? let him trust in the name of the Lord , and stay upon his God." (Isa. 50:10)
I'm reading The Hiding Place aloud to the children and every time I read it I remind myself that I should read it more often than I do. We must learn to trust God that He is good all the time. He is good when we feel wonderful and blessed and He is good when we cannot begin to understand what He is doing in our lives.
As I read it I am reminded that if He asks me to go through a dark place He will enable me to walk through that dark place. I don't have to try to toughen myself up for it or prepare myself for it. All I need to do is lean hard on Him as we walk through it together. I must take the initiative to obey and trust Him to give me the strength to obey.
Every time I obey by the power of the Spirit I have partaken of the life of Christ. This is the well of water He promised that would be springing up in us.
Many times when I pray I find myself getting upset emotionally as I bring seemingly impossible requests to the Lord. The Lord taught me a lesson through my 9 year old son about this. John was memorizing Phil. 4:6,7 in school and he asked me to explain what it meant.
I asked him if he ever worried about rather we would feed him. He said no. I asked him why and he said because he knew daddy took care of making sure we had food. I asked him if he ever worried about having clothes or a place to sleep. His answer again was no, that daddy made sure we had that.
I asked him if he really wanted something for his upcoming birthday would he be afraid to ask his dad for it. Of course, he said he wouldn't.
Then I told him that's how our heavenly Father wanted us to be. To trust Him just like we trusted our earthly fathers to care for us when we were children. Just to come to our Father and give him our concerns and request and then trust Him that He's going to take care of it for us.
Since I've explained that to John the Lord has reminded me to practice what I taught! When I go to pray and feel myself churning emotionally, I am reminded to pray, thank the Lord that He cares more about it than I do and then walk off and leave it with Him. He's going to take care of it because He said He is. That must be enough for me.
So today as I bring a friend to the Lord that just had almost half of her face removed because of cancer, andI bring my precious daughter with MS to the Lord, (with 5 small children and a new baby on the way), loved ones that seem to be straying further and further from their spiritual moorings, personal concerns and lots of little foxes that like to nibble at my vine, I know that I can come to the Lord and pour it all out on Him and He'll bear my burdens for me.
May I urge anyone reading this to let the Lord teach you through your sufferings to believe His every word as literally as they are written to us. No matter what rages around you in your circumstances that seems to make your case the exception don't believe your senses--believe the Word.
The result is the passage I call my "post-depression" verse- Song of Solomon 8:5-"Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?"
It's a wonderful place to be!