Struggling With God

February 8  Struggling With God

 

"I believe; help my unbelief!" Mark 9:24, RSV.

The religious journey isn't equally pleasant for everyone. That is especially true of those with a sensitive nature. And young Ellen was one of those sentivive ones.

Yesterday we found her "seized with terror" when as a child she first read about the nearness of the Advent. Her fear of the Second Coming stemmed from several sources. One was a deep sense of unworthiness. "There was in my heart," she penned, "a feeling that I could never become worthy to be called a child of God. . .It seemed to me that I was not good enough to enter heaven"(LS 21).

For years Ellen struggled with her fears. Two false beliefs compounded her problem. The first ws that she had to be good-or even perfect-before God could accept her. The second was that if she was truly saved she would have a feeling of spiritual ecstasy.

Her emotional darkness began to dissipate during the summer of 1841 when she attended a Methodist camp meeting at Buxton, Maine. There she ehard in a sermon that all self-sufficiency and effort were worthless in gaining favor with sinner becomes a hopeful, believing child of God"(ibid, 23).

From that point forward she earnestly sought pardon for her sins and strove to give herself entirely to the Lord. "All the language of my heart was," she later penned, "'Help, Jesus; save me, or I perish!'" "Suddenly, " she tells us, "my burden left me, and my heart was light"(ibid.).

But, she thought, this is too good to be true. As a result, she tried to reassume the load of distress and guilt that had been her constant companion. As she put it: "I seemed to me that I had no right to feel joyous and happy"(ibid.). Only gradually did she understand the wonder of the fullness of God's redeeming grace.

But in spite of her new understanding she continued to struggle with doubts because she did not always have the ecstatic feelings that she believed she had to have if she were truly saved. As a result, she continued to fear that she was not perfect enough to meet her Savior at His advent.

Does Ellen's reaction seem familiar? Many of us find it hard to believe that the gospel is really as good as God claims it is. In the end the solution is not feelings but reading God's promises for what they really say.

Help us, Lord, today in our unbelief.

He who lightened the cares and anxieties of His widowed mother and helped her to provide for the household at Nazareth, sympathizes with every mother in her struggle to provide her children food. He who had compassion on the multitude because they "fainted, and were scattered abroad" (Matthew 9:36), still has compassion on the suffering poor. His hand is stretched out toward them in blessing; and in the very prayer which He gave His disciples, He teaches us to remember the poor.(TFMB 111).

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