He is Enough

The world can get you down. Life comes at you from unexpected places and hits you in the knees. Circumstances can change on a dime.

You can be basking in warm sunshine one moment and then a flash of lightning streaks across a darkening sky and suddenly you're in a torrential downpour that's unforgiving and unrelenting. One day I was enjoying my daughter's college graduation ceremony and the very next day I was in the back of an ambulance having a major heart attack. One morning I kissed my wife goodbye to go out for my morning walk and when I returned I found her dead on the floor.

I don't know how people handle crisis and tragedy without the Lord Jesus Christ. But no matter how hard your present situation is, friend, I can promise you this. Jesus will get you through.

Jesus is enough. He's never left your side. He's caught every tear in His nail-pierced hand.

He has walked this earth in skin and bone with a human heart burst in full of compassion. All you can do in a time of crisis or adversity is lean on His strong arm and lay your head on His bosom. They say there are two kinds of preachers in the world, one who comforts the afflicted and one who afflicts the comfortable.

Most of my ministry is of the unpopular kind of afflicting the comfortable because God called me to a revival ministry to awaken a sleeping church. But you can't play a symphony on a one-string Stradivarius, so from time to time I change my tune when necessary. This is one of those times.

I see a lot of depressed people in the church today. Some are standing behind a pulpit. The great British preacher Charles Spurgeon suffered from bouts of depression so bad and so prolonged he had a name for it.

He called it the Black Dog. I believe Satan wants to sideline a believer from usefulness and two of his best tools that he uses against believers are the weapons of disappointment and discouragement. If the devil can get you down, down into the dumps, then he can take you lower.

He knows how to do it better than anyone else in the history of the world. If he can turn a deacon or two against a good pastor, get that pastor discouraged to the point where he's ready to throw in the towel, then the devil's done his work expertly. My Bible tells me we have three enemies who are always striving against us.

The world, the flesh, and the devil. Sometimes we overlook one of those culprits, and that's the flesh. We're born with a sin nature and are bent towards sin, and it's easy at times to allow disappointment and discouragement to stay too long to harden our hearts.

If we go to griping and complaining about our circumstances, it can affect our walk with God. I was on the phone with an evangelist the other day who spent 45 minutes of our conversation griping and complaining about his circumstances. But complaining can lead to hardening the heart, and we are warned in Hebrews, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the days of temptation, in the wilderness.

All I know, friends, is that when life and the devil get you down, there's only one who can get you up and out, and His name is Jesus. One of the hardest passages of Scripture for me to read is Matthew's Gospel in chapter 26, beginning in verses 36 through 46, where Jesus is praying in Gethsemane, and it says, Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.

Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death, tarry ye here and watch with me. I will stop there, friends, so I won't break down and cry by proceeding further. Here the Son of God and His human flesh is in a crisis, and He needs His friends nearby.

He takes three of them near Him, but they fail Him nonetheless by falling asleep while He passes into intense agony there in that garden. His disciples let Him down by first sleeping. When He needs them the most, He needs them to be praying, and then they let Jesus down further, one by betrayal and the rest by desertion.

Every single one of them deserted Him, turned coward and ran away. When I read this passage, my mind drifts back to another garden where man failed God through disobedience as well. And it's often a wonder to me why a thrice holy God even keeps putting up with me with all my failings and faults and times where I've disappointed Him even though He's never once disappointed me.

And the only thing that gets me through is when I turn to the book of Revelation in a read. And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead and the Prince of the kings of the earth, unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood. And when I read that, I dip my hands in that described blood of the Lamb and I'm reinvigorated.

I have hope again. I can press on further no matter how lonely I am, how tough things are. I can still see a Savior who's waiting for me and who loved me and gave Himself for me.

And that is enough. He is enough. Listen, friend.

If you're down in the dumps and your circumstances are too heavy and beyond your control, remember this. No matter how hard and seemingly hopeless your situation is, your faithful friend Jesus is by your side and He's not only able to get you through, He is enough.