Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:
The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”
The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him. Lamentations 3:21-25 NLT
I still remember the shock I felt when reading the third chapter of Lamentations and coming across these verses and realizing that this is where Thomas Chisholm got the words for his beloved hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” I had imagined that the context for the hymn was some great victory of faith, with accompanying overflowing blessings. But no, most of Lamentations is filled with outcries of grief, and despair, and even accusations that God has gone too far in his punishment of his people. Yet here are these astonishing words, right in the middle of the despair.
This is the third “takeaway” from Lamentations: True faith is found in the darkest hours. What I may believe when the sun is shining, when my stomach is full, and when I am holding the hands of those I love may not actually tell very much about what I actually believe. Maybe I am just enjoying pleasant feelings and calling that faith. But it is what I believe when the pleasant feelings and experiences are all gone that shows what I really believe.
But don’t the outcries and accusations say that faith is not real? If I have true faith, surely I will not say, or feel, those things. Here is the vital point: the feelings, whatever they may be, are real. That’s why, as in the previous devotion, we should be honest in declaring them to God. But, they are not reality. The reality is that God is love, that he is true to his word, that he can be trusted, that his ultimate purpose is never to destroy, but to refine and renew. That is reality, however we may feel at any given moment.
Praise God! Faith is not feelings. Whatever you may be feeling at this moment, God is who he really is, apart from those feelings, and you can build your life on that reality.
Called To Be Transformed 