It is possible to be both heartbroken and hopeful. God is near, He sees sadness, but He also sees the future of hope He has for you. His nearness reminds us that the pain is temporary, but His love is everlasting.

If, today, an unforeseen crisis has slammed into your life and knocked you sideways… What should you do? Defuse or confront? Praise God for who He is for you or insist that God show up and help you… now… when His timing is different from yours? Jesus and David would say, both responses are needed.

We make our choices, good and bad, each of which set the course for our lives. It may include some wonderful times of fun and frolic, but how we manage that also has ramifications and repercussions for us.

If you feel like you’re in a spiritual wasteland, God is still with you! He promises to never leave you nor forsake you. When I’m feeling distant from God, I repeat over and over to myself His promises, I read back through my journals of answered prayers, and I continue to put my hope in God!

In Psalm 41, David is tempted to go against his integrity because of physical suffering and social pressures. It is straightforward to obey God when we are healthy and surrounded by people who support us. But what do we do when your body is giving out and you have no one on your team? It is very easy to throw in the towel and compromise.

God wants us to know Him like the dance moves we’ve been doing for years or the song we can’t get out of our head. He wants us to know Him with muscle memory, so when the world gets dark, and the storms rage, the first thing our hearts will do is turn to Him. Our automatic response will be trust.

I’d like to redeem the phrase YOLO. “You Only Live Once,” so let’s live our lives in a way that pushes us closer to Jesus. Let’s take notes from David and run to Jesus with our frustration and anguish. Let’s seek the Lord for wisdom. While our time on Earth may be like a vapor, may you know that the God you serve is eternal. We are limited, but He is limitless!

I think, if you asked him, David would tell you that, today, he's not feeling like a very good Christian. Ever feel like that? Ever feel like your failures have disqualified you from God's love? Or that your faults have trumped His forgiveness? Or that your chronic errors have driven Him from you?

When we are aligned with God, delighting in Him, asking in the name of Jesus for what He would want and praying according to the will of God, then we have the assurance of God’s promise, “He will give us the desires of our heart.”

What does it mean to put your trust under the shadow of God’s wings? We are adopted children of God, the creator of Heaven and Earth! There is nothing too big for Him to handle. There is nothing too tragic for Him to not provide comfort for us. It’s when we come, weak and broken, like David in the Psalm, that we can find refuge and comfort in Him!