When the Valley is Deep

In life, hardships happen. The things that others inflict on us and even the things we do to ourselves. The self-sabotage that we bring into our own lives for one reason or another. These things that crush us in spirit. This is the time in life when we've entered into the valley.

The valley is a place of psychological and emotional pain. The place where you feel overtaken by darkness. Where you feel all alone. It's the place where you become introspective and are forced to get brutally honest with yourself. Your mind can even seem clouded and thinking is impaired and faulty due to the pressure.The valley is the place we can come to believe God has somehow turned away from us, forsaken us. This is not true. In Hebrews 13:5 He promises to 'never leave thee, nor forsake thee.'

In the valley we wonder 'how in the world did I end up here?' We don't always have the answer. When the valley is deep enough we wonder if we will ever be able to rise out of it.

I am here to tell you this: You are able to rise out of the valley, no matter how deep it may be and no matter how long you've been in this place. You may feel that this place you're in is death in a sense or is leading up to some sort of death, not necessarily physically, but that something in you, something of yours is dying. It must be so because of the great pain associated with the valley experience. But you are coming out on the other side of this. David confirms this in Psalm 23:4 when he expressed that he was walking through ' the valley of the shadow of death.' He knew he wasn't there to stay and neither are you.

Sometimes it is hard to run to God if we feel He is the one causing the valley or if we know that our own actions have landed us in this place. Guilt holds us back. But where else can we turn?

Things will eventually begin to crumble if we have built upon sinking sand. We may be born again, but we have refused to build our lives upon the Word of God. And the time comes when life finally catches up with us. And the material we built on crumbles beneath us and so it seems our life with it. But, for those in Christ there is always hope even when all appears lost. The thing to remember when the valley is deep is to not blame God for the things that have landed us in the place we are in. Even though He allowed it.

Why would He allow us to land in the valley? I will not try to answer that. Only He knows why. In Isaiah 55:8-9 He tells us, 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.'

What to do when you wind up in the valley

1. Repent. Confess the sin that landed you in the valley and all other known sin and turn away from it.

2. Run to the Father in prayer. He knew you would be in this place at this time. And It never stopped Him from lovng you and caring about you. Right now He's waiting for you to turn to Him for comfort, strehgth and deliverance.

3. Cling to Him. No matter how hard it gets, hold tight to Him.

4. Accept His Word as the final authority over everything, even your present circumstance. Meditate on it so that it can begin to take root and grow, bringing you into the place the Father wants you. Built up on the Word.

Our valleys are always only temporary. Use them to build the life God intends upon the right foundation.