Daily Devotional: Thursday, June 10

Speaker: Ben Sigman

Theme: Dealing with Setbacks

Weekend Music links on iTunes: Salvation is Here by Hillsong; Yesterday, Today & Forever by Vicky Beeching; Cannons by Phil Wickham; Need You Here by Hillsong.

Read:  Proverbs 3:5-6

Think:   “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.” 

-      Corrie Ten Boom

The full impact of this quote comes from knowing something of the life story of its author, which she relates in her autobiography The Hiding Place.  Corrie Ten Boom lived a quiet life in the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands from her birth in 1892 through the outbreak of World War II.  When the Germans overran Holland in 1940, Corrie was still unmarried and living with her sister and their father above his clock shop.  Devout Christians, the Ten Booms began to feed and hide Jews in their home to save them from deportation to Nazi concentration camps.

They were caught, and sent to several concentration camps themselves, each worse than the last. First Corrie’s father, and then her sister died in the camps.  Corrie wrote of intense hunger, fierce cold, disease, lice, and sheer humiliation.  She surely understood dark tunnels.  Yet she was able to affirm her trust in God even in those circumstances.

We need to learn to trust God like that.  It seems unlikely that any of us will ever experience anything like what Corrie Ten Boom did – thank God!  But in the setbacks we do encounter, we have an opportunity to display a similar trust in God.  We need only ask God to use the ‘dark tunnels’ to teach us greater trust.

Do:  Take out dollar bill.  On the back, over the large ONE, there is a phrase. It says ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’. Highlight that on the bill, and tuck it away somewhere you will see it as a reminder to trust God even in the dark times.

Pray:  God, I think I’ve got the hang of trusting you when all is going well.  But when life throws a curveball, it’s not so easy.  Help me learn to trust you at all times.  Use the setbacks in my life to teach me trust.  Amen. 

The eDevotional is written each week by a team of volunteers from Timberlake Church.

4505 236th Ave. NE • Redmond, WA 98053 • 425-869-4400 • info@timberlakeonline.org