Kara Flynn
Nov 3 · 3 min read

On Monday , I rolled out of bed at 6:45, ignoring my alarm to get up and read my Bible before I left for school. I got ready, made myself a bagel, and left the house. I pulled into the parking lot at 7:15, parked and read my bible in my car. I have started reading through Romans, so I flipped to Romans 4 and began to read.

Verses 20 and 21 caught my eye.

“Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” (Romans 4:20–21 New International Version)

I don’t know about you, but I want to be a whole lot more like Abraham. I want to be strengthened in my faith when I feel lost.

At least for me, that gets really hard. The other day, I was driving home from Target and the song “Sinking Deep” by Hillsong Young & Free came on.

I started crying. I don’t know why, but I was suddenly weeping in my car. It is moments like that that I remember how much I am really holding back from God. How much I am trying to handle on my own. How many things I choose not to lay at His feet.

That has always been my style. I let things bottle up until I couldn’t take them anymore. Until I explode (most of the time) in a sea of tears.

Was I really believing that God was going to keep His promises?

The simple answer is no. And I haven’t been able to be at peace with that fact since this summer. There are a lot of things that are easier said than done. And sometimes believing truth is HARD. Like really hard, guys. Especially in times when we feel like He isn’t listening. My heart has been pulling me in every different direction recently and God just seems like a blur in the distance. But it is moments like that, when I am crying in my car, that I realize that that is Him. He is wrecking me through lyrics in a song. Because He already knows everything going on in my heart, He just has to pick away at me deep enough to get me to (voluntarily) reveal it to Him. Give it up to Him. Because that is the only way I can find freedom. He knows it and so do I.

We can’t expect to find peace and freedom in Christ when we aren’t giving things up. We need to recognize that there is a burden that you have got to let go of for Him to cover you in peace.

If there were a pile of bricks on your chest, the only way to find relief would be to take them off. And Jesus wants to help with that. We need to take. them. off. And He is at our side the whole time, with a mighty hand, ready to lift the weight once we decide we have had enough.

But that’s the hard part, isn’t it? We have to decide we have had enough. And that takes guts. And faith. A lot of it. And my prayer for you, friend, and for myself, is that we can find the strength to listen to Him and believe that He has promised to take this weight from us. And believe that He will.

Because, even when it is so hard to believe…

HE. KEEPS. HIS. PROMISES.

Rest in that tonight, friends.


Some songs that have spoken to my heart in my seasons of deepest struggle:

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