Journal entry: The long night I wrestled with worries
During a season of stressful change, I would often lie awake agonizing about worries, decisions and fear about the future.
If you've ever experienced this, I offer the following personal journal excerpt as an encouragement. The Lord taught me several things during one particularly long, dark night.
--
I probably didn't fall asleep until 2:30 or 3 last night. Here's how the evening unfolded.
After earnestly praying for God's wisdom, he brought to mind Proverbs 27:12: "The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty." This same verse is echoed verbatim in Prov. 22:3, so I took extra notice!
Though I concluded that I needed to make a change in my life, many worries and anxieties crept back in.
At about 1:20, the real conversation started, with plenty of agony. I asked him outright why he piled so much on top of me.
He dropped into my mind that I should count it pure joy that I was having these troubles.
Huh?
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance (James 1:2-3).
That's great, I thought, but just how do we count our troubles as pure joy?? I can't just manufacture this joy. It doesn't make it any easier knowing the joy will help me endure. I'm not enduring very well right now, thank you.
The more I pondered this, the more guilty I felt for not being joyful. According to this Scripture, the more difficult my challenge, the more joyful I should be.
Then it occurred to me … if I were somehow able to feel such joy in the midst of my troubles, it would have to mean that I had so much confidence in God that I had no care in the world.
Whoa. That woke me up even more.
I rewound my mind to all the times he had delivered me throughout my life. The memories hit one after another until I lost count and realized he had done it over and over. I was astounded.
In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame (Ps. 22:4-5).
The psalmist looked back generations and saw the same thing I saw in my own life.
I also realized the Father desires to glorify himself in me. What greater glory, Lord, than showing yourself strong when I am weak? Faithful when I am hopeless? In control when I'm spinning out in a panic?
As the night wore on, I asked the Lord if he had anything else to tell me, or if it was finally time for sleep.
He had one more thought for my tired mind. It was that the only way we truly begin to understand his heart behind Scripture is when we're desperate for it. That's when his love settles deeper into our souls—when we most need him.
Being desperate for him, I have to say, is not fun. Especially not during a long night like I had. It is exhausting, stressful, agonizing.
But as I look back on our time together, it gives me joy.
Tom Harper
Founder, BiblicalLeadership.com
LinkedIn profile | My books
 | Tom Harper is publisher of BiblicalLeadership.com and executive chairman of Networld Media Group, a business-to-business publisher and event producer. He has written five books, including Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019) as well as the Christian business fable Through Colored Glasses and its sequel Inner Threat (DeepWater, 2022). Learn More » |
More on Leadership Devotions
- How might God be trying to grow you? (by Tom Harper)
- 4 final lessons to help us wait on God (by Tom Harper)
- How to patiently wait on God (by Tom Harper)
- How to courageously wait for God (by Tom Harper)
