But God…
For many people, life is a continual struggle to overcome odds, overcome setbacks, overcome defeat. Think of the inner-city child raised in generational poverty who grows up to become the first person in his or her family to graduate from college. Think of the person who is working hard to overcome the trauma of being sexually or physically abused. Several years ago, I prayed with a lady who has battled self-worth issues all her life after being told at an early age by her father that he wanted a boy and not a girl.
Historically, minorities and women have had to (and sadly, still are) overcome great odds just to be given equality with white men. Have you heard of the Three-Fifths Compromise? When the United States Constitutional Convention met in 1787, they reached a compromise that to determine the number of delegates each state would be entitled to, three out of five slaves would be counted, thus considering each slave as 3/5 of a person. Even though the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited the federal government or individual states from denying any citizen the right to vote, it wasn’t until 1920 that women were granted the right to vote by the 19th Amendment and it wasn’t until 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson that African-American citizens were no longer prohibited from exercising their right to vote.
Sports are filled with endless stories of teams and players overcoming injuries and adversity to win championships. Who can forget the Miracle on Ice at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics? And some of the best sports movies of all time involve underdogs overcoming great odds – Rudy, Hoosiers, Remember the Titans. A recently released movie, The Boys in the Boat, chronicles the University of Washington junior varsity crew team as they strive to compete for the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
But, for every story of overcoming the odds, there are also stories of constant struggle, constant failure, constant oppression. Maybe yours is one of those stories. No matter how hard you try and pick yourself up, the reality is, you just can’t seem to get up off the dirt. It could be that you keep falling back down or maybe the playground bully keeps pushing you back down. Despair, discouragement, hopelessness; they are all you know anymore. But the good news, the life-changing good news, is that with God, there is always hope.
Throughout the pages of scripture, there is a two-word phrase repeated over and over again that brings us great hope … But God. These two words are at the heart of the gospel message and they will transform your life. It is God who can, and who does, turn what seems impossible into possible. He is in the business of helping people overcome odds. Maybe one of these four scripture passages stirs up a bit of hope deep within your soul.
Just when it seems like the flood waters might never recede, causing you to drown – “But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided” (Genesis 8:1).
Just when it seems like all your strength is gone – “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).
Just when it seems like your entire family, and maybe even the whole world, is against you – “Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him and rescued him from all his troubles” (Acts 7:9-10).
And just when everything you believe in seems to crash and burn – “And when they had carried out all that was written of him (Jesus Christ), they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead” (Acts 13:29-30).
So, today, regardless of how hopeless you feel, how weak you feel, how alone you feel, and how devastated you feel, you can have confidence that we have a God who intervenes, who redeems, who resurrects, who restores what is lost, who makes all things new.
But God…
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