God’s Comma – Andrew Wilkes
This is hard. I’ll never make it. I am a failure as a Christian. There is no hope for my marriage. My life hurts so badly, and I don’t see a way out.
All of us as followers of Jesus have made these statements and really meant them. It was not simply a momentary lapse of faith into self-loathing, but a real, deep sense of desperation. Your actions, your thoughts, something you did yourself or something that someone did to you caused you to completely lose hope. It was their fault, it was my fault, it was somebody’s fault. Then you looked up from the hole in which you were trapped like Joseph, perhaps saying, this is the end of my life. You were taken out of the pit, like Joseph and sold into a “slavery” of depression with crushed hopes and dreams. Certainly, the promise of God cannot be valid any longer. You put a period on your circumstance, who wouldn’t? You placed finality on a difficult season and prepared for the long road ahead, leading nowhere on this earth, but one day, injured, bruised, you would enter eternal glory and hopefully, heaven will be better than this pain here and now.
God has a way of placing a comma where we place a period. This is seen in the life of Jacob, who was a deceiver, a cheat, a liar and fled home to get away from a brother who wanted to kill him. Jacob’s weak character and lies put him in physical danger, BUT God met him in a cave and spoke clear promises into his life and then worked for 20 years to break him. Jacob even wrestled with an angel and became a prince with God. Joseph, the son of Jacob, was his father’s favorite. He was a bit immature and was thrown into a pit as a result of the jealously of his brothers. He was wrongly accused of rape, tossed into prison and forgotten by the one man who could get him out, BUT God gave Pharaoh a dream and Joseph was catapulted into God’s plan for his life. Joseph would go on to have a wife, children, and be used to preserve the life of a nation and the very family that rejected him. God would use this entire scenario to break his family and bring them in line with His purposes that would eventually lead to the birth of the Messiah. Jesus Himself was rejected by His own people, was cruelly mocked and beaten, and was nailed to a tree. Jesus was killed and buried in a tomb, BUT God raised Him from the dead and Christ now sits victoriously at the right hand of the Father! One day very soon, every knee in all creation will bow down to Him in worship! He won the victory!
What makes these situations different than yours? Read that question again. Could it be that your lack of faith in God has placed a period where there should only be a comma? Could it be that you are not trusting God’s word to His people in Romans 8 and Hebrews 11?
Romans 8:28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Hebrews 11:6
And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Read through Hebrews 11. Though there is not always an actual comma in the sentence about each saint, there is a comma represented in the history of their lives. Just like the lives of Jacob, Joseph and Jesus, you too can trust in God’s comma. But will you? Or will you be depressed? Will you be downcast and never step out in faith again, because of your failure, mistakes or wrongdoing at the hands of others?
Rise up saint of God, there are those who have faced what you have faced, and they now stand in glory today calling out to us, “Don’t stop, don’t quit! Believe God is true!” There is a comma, God’s comma! There is more to the story, if you will just believe Him! Open your heart and mouth to God, ask Him to help you to believe for the comma, for the rest of the story. We aren’t told what the rest of the pages of our lives hold, but we know that it will be for God’s glory. Though we don’t understand it all now, there is coming a day when a period will be placed on the end of our lives by God Himself. Until that day, I hope in God and I wait for him to write the rest of the story; the story that comes after God’s comma.