Have you ever experienced a circumstance God allowed you to endure that discouraged you to the point that it became natural for you to think the worst about God? That He’s not good? That He doesn’t care?
Those ideas and discouragements are nothing new. When the serpent confronted Eve in the garden, he didn’t just cast doubt on God’s Word but also God’s nature. He deceived her by saying she could eat from the tree because God knows when you eat of it, you will be like Him. (See Gen 3:5.) As if God was holding Eve back from something good. When, in reality, His restrictions were protection.
Or consider Christ. When Jesus was in the wilderness, fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, the devil came to Him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread” (Matt. 4:3). If you’re the Son of God, why are you hungry? Take advantage of your divine power to feed yourself since your Father hasn’t. The devil tried with Jesus the strategy he succeeded in with Eve, which was to tempt God’s Son to distrust God’s care.
And sometimes this accusing tone doesn’t come directly from the devil’s mouth. Sometimes it comes through those he has influenced and tempted — those who are walking according to his logic without knowing it. When the disciples were in a boat that was being bullied by the waves, Jesus was asleep at the bottom of it. They came and woke Him, not with petitions but with accusations saying, “Teacher! Don’t you care that we’re going to die?” (Mark 4:38). Care? The whole reason He came to the earth was because He cared. “For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). And He not only cares about your soul but also cares about your cares. All the worries that keep you up at night. Through the pen of Peter, in effect the Holy Spirit said to cast “all your cares on him, because he cares about you” (1 Pet. 5:7). Not just loves you but cares for you.
And that, my friend, is what the flesh and the devil, through discouragement, will tempt you to doubt. They would have you believe that the God who died for you doesn’t actually care about you. And I exhort you in this way: The devil is a liar. If there is any being who doesn’t care about you, it’s him. But your Lord, your God, loves you with an everlasting love. He is “the LORD … a compassionate and gracious God” (Ex. 34:6).
ABOUT UPON WAKING
What do you wake up to each day? What do you discover once your eyes have opened and you put your feet to the floor? A mountain of notifications? An endless feed of headlines that make you angry? A flood of tasks that you can’t possibly get done in the next twenty-four hours?
What if you could wake up each day to discover something so much bigger—and so much better for you—than all that chaos? What if you could discover God? What if you could discover yourself in light of that God? What if your eyes could be opened to the things that really mattered? What if, in one simple devotional a day, you could glean principles from timeless wisdom to sharpen you for each day’s inevitable challenges?
In her lyrical, compelling, and poignant voice, bestselling author and Bible teacher Jackie Hill Perry offers sixty short, daily reflections on specific passages from Scripture to help you awaken to the God you were made for, the life you were made for, and the person you were made to be.
ABOUT JACKIE HILL PERRY
Jackie Hill Perry is a Bible teacher, writer, and artist. In addition to Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For, she is the author of Jude: Contending for the Faith in Today’s Culture; Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been; and Holier Than Thou: How God’s Holiness Helps Us Trust Him. At home she is known as wife to Preston and mommy to Eden, Autumn, Sage, and August.
