Plans to Give You Hope and a Future

Lord, I’m choosing to believe that You can and will redeem the years I have spent in my pit.

In our Christian subculture, we think a pit of sin is the only kind of pit there is. But we have to think much more broadly. For starters, I see in God’s Word three ways we can get into a pit.

First, you know you are in a pit when you feel stuck, and you can’t get yourself out. David’s pit was “slimy,” muddy, and miry (Psalm 40:2), and Jeremiah “sank down” in his (Jeremiah 38:6).

Second, you know you are in a pit when you can’t stand up . . . against your enemy. In other words, a pit is an early (figurative) grave that Satan digs for you in hopes he can bury you alive. Satan can’t make you stay there, but God will not make you leave.

And you know you are in a pit when you’ve lost vision . . . because pits have no windows. In that darkness, we can no longer see things that may have once been obvious to us. Also, the close confinement of a pit exhausts us with the endless echo of self-absorption. We can’t see out, so we turn our sights in, and that nearsightedness breeds hopelessness.

In what ways, if any, are you feeling stuck . . . or caught in the mud . . . or sinking down?