Need an uplifting word for your low place? Read this.
Photo: Getty/FGTrade/Illustration: EEW Magazine
Editor’s Note: This devotion was written by Dianna Hobbs and used by permission from her ‘Your Daily Cup of Inspiration’ blog. To read more encouragement like this, visit YourDailyCupOfInspiration.com
Ever been dumped? Cast aside? Pushed away? Rejected? Betrayed? Left in a bad spot? Thrust into a dark valley?
If you have, and you are seeking God for what’s next, this word is for you, my friend. Be assured that God has a plan. He is going to pull you up and out of that low place and elevate you with His mighty and outstretched hand!
Since we’re on the topic of being dumped, the first serious boyfriend I ever had broke up with me while we were in the car together on our way to watch a movie.
Let me set the stage.
The year is about 1995, and we’re headed to see a film titled Congo. I’m contentedly riding along in the passenger seat, when he abruptly pulls the car over and tells me that our romantic relationship is over.
With a pained expression, he says, “It’s not you, it’s me”—or something to that effect. Basically, he explains that though I am a good person, and he loves me, we are going in opposite directions…blah, blah, blah.
My mind is reeling, but I’m just staring at him blankly. I can clearly see his lips moving, but I’m having trouble processing the shocking message escaping them. I sit there frozen, silent, numb, humiliated.
Imagine the drive back to my parents’ place. It is the longest, most miserable, awkward commute. Once he finally pulls into the driveway—which seems to take forever— he offers to talk more about his decision to cut me loose.
“There’s nothing else to talk about,” is all I managed to say, as he looked at me with pity, adding insult to injury. You should have seen me clambering to get out of his vehicle! Then I scurried to the front door with my dignity dragging the concrete like tin cans on the bumper of a car with a “Just Married” sign attached. Only, the sign on my back says, “Just Dumped.”
It was not my finest moment.
I entered the house gobsmacked and darted straight upstairs to my bedroom, trying my darndest to avoid everyone. I wasn’t ready to reveal that I had been dumped during my date. It was a low moment for which I felt completely unprepared, but I now know that God was preparing me for something greater.
Not long after I was dumped, I met an amazing man, Kenya Hobbs. Three years later, in 1998, I went from getting dumped to getting hitched. Kenya and I have been blessed with four delightful children, and we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in January.
God is good.
I know that being dumped is no fun. However, whether you get dumped by a romantic partner, dumped by an employer, dumped by so-called friends, or suddenly get dumped into a chaotic situation that you don’t know how to handle, just know, no matter who dumps you, God never will. In fact, He will lift you up and deliver you out of the worst situations.
“God is stretching out His arm and extending His hand to you even now, pulling you up out of that low place. He is intervening in your situation!”
Psalm 27:10 declares, “If my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up” (NRSV). This Bible verse is the perfect reminder that when others put you down, the Lord will take you up. When others walk away, His love will pursue you. When others dump you, God will lift you.
In Scripture, Jeremiah the Prophet got dumped, but he also got lifted.
Sure did.
He was dumped right into a deep, dark, muddy pit (Jeremiah 38). It happened after he delivered an unfavorable word from the Lord to Judah. He told them to surrender to Babylonian forces or die. And since Judah didn’t like this divine message foretelling their 70-year period of captivity as judgment for unrepentant sin, they chose to figuratively shoot the messenger.
Angry top officials’ obtained permission from King Zedekiah to kill this prophet of doom, as if getting rid of God’s mouthpiece would nullify the word that came from God’s mouth. So ridiculous. The Lord is always faithful to perform His word—good or bad. So then, whether Judah believed or received it, what God said was going to happen; His word is irrevocable. I love Romans 3:3 NASB, which says, What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it?”
Once these vitriolic leaders got the go-ahead from the king to carry out their mission to destroy Jeremiah, they lowered him by ropes into a pit. If that wasn’t bad enough, they left him alone to starve to death with no food or water. Clearly, they wanted Jeremiah’s demise to be cruel, slow and painful.
But they did all that for nothing. Not only could they not reverse God’s word, they also couldn’t kill His messenger. The Lord gave Jeremiah favor with an Ethiopian man named Ebed-melech who asked King Zedekiah’s permission to release Jeremiah. The king consented and thirty men worked together to set God’s manservant free.
Ebed-melech, the leader of the freedom campaign, has a significant name. In Hebrew, it means “servant of the king.” In this situation, Ebed-Melech acted in service to a king much greater than Zedekiah. He was doing the work of the One who sits on Heaven’s throne whose Kingdom never ends.
My friend, the same God is still seated on the throne and is orchestrating your deliverance, aligning your circumstances, and pulling you up from your low place. No pit can hold you when God upholds you with His powerful hand (Isaiah 41:10).
I just know that somebody here has been feeling discouraged. Have you? If so, God is saying, don’t worry about being dumped, abandoned, mistreated, ostracized, attacked, and stuck in the mud. Your day of deliverance is coming.
The next time you feel like you’ve sunk too low for God to reach you, hear the Holy Spirit declaring the words of Isaiah 59:1 NIV, which is the sweetener I’m stirring into your cup of inspiration. It says, “Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.”
As you drink down the contents of your cup, thank God that His arm is long and strong enough to pull you out of the deepest, darkest pit. As a matter of fact, He told me to tell you that He is stretching out His arm and extending His hand to you even now. He is listening to your prayers. He is intervening in your situation. He is causing your circumstances to align with His will. He is moving on the hearts of others to bless you. He is seeing to it that all things work together for your good.
Believe that.
God, thank You for reminding me that when I am pushed aside, hurt, abandoned, and disappointed by man, You will never leave me alone. I praise You for confirmation that You are intervening in the negative circumstances I have been dumped into. You are working things out in my favor and pulling me up from my low place for Your glory. I receive and expect increase and favor, and I declare that it shall be done. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Dianna Hobbs is founder of EEW Magazine Online and CEO of Empowering Everyday Women Ministries — a 501c3 nonprofit organization that shares the gospel and provides humanitarian aid to the hurting. She is also the writer of Your Daily Cup of Inspiration and executive producer of the companion podcast. Follow Dianna on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. Sign up for her free ministry newsletter here.
