This year’s winter in New York seemed extra long. I trudged through months of frost and chill, weeks of air below freezing, the kind of weather no coat can really keep out. My fingertips cracked and bled. New York lost a lot of its romance. Of course, the difficulty of the winter says more about me than about New York or the seasons. I was born and raised in sunny southern California. This was only my third East Coast winter, and the first two were considered mild. I tend to run cold anyway. Perhaps the winter wasn’t extra long, and I am just a bit extra fragile.
But it was still hard―like this school year. September to now has felt, in some ways, like one long winter: cold, dark, and windy. Life just seemed to escalate, between taking harder classes and leading clubs, ministering to fellow students and serving at church, traveling to visit my boyfriend and making decisions for the future. I am thankful for each of these spheres I have been given to steward―the Lord was kind to me in each of them. And yet there have still been countless moments this year that I do not care to relive, moments of struggling to pray, struggling to keep my eyes open, struggling to get past the overwhelming desire to just be done. Done with what? Done with this assignment, this class, this semester, this season. Or maybe just done with all the tasks, all the dust and drivel of life.
I am at last done with the exams and papers, the early morning classes, the late nights in the library. Gone, at least for the summer, are all the circumstantial things that make life as a student hard. The moment I’ve been waiting for has come: summer in full bloom. But it doesn’t quite feel like victory.
Victory, of course, belongs to the Christian. Paul writes that over tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword, “we are more than conquerors”―that is, we overwhelmingly conquer (Rom. 8:37). The Christian, assured of the resurrection to come, sings, “O death, where is your victory?” (1 Cor. 15:55). For God “gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” over sin and death (1 Cor. 15:56). And we are given victory in Christ over not only affliction, sin, and death, but also the world, for “everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world” (1 John 5:4). Over and over in his Word, God assures his saints that they are not merely survivors tossed to and fro by the schemes and tempests of a sinful world, but a people who overcome. And it is not a victory only for the final day, when all are judged and those who are forgiven in Christ overcome hell. This is a victory over present calamities and threats: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, the sword, the world. That is to say, it is a victory over every form of suffering that we may encounter. We are told, again and again, that as Christians we are victors even now, in this life.
What does that mean? What is that supposed to look like? My year has been marked by this question. I have felt uncertain, distressed, and discouraged often more than victorious. The cognitive dissonance of knowing that I am victorious in Christ but feeling defeated has spawned more hard questions, such as Have I really grown at all? or the classic Am I just discouraged because my faith isn’t strong enough?¹
The most disorienting part is not knowing how to answer the question, “What has God been teaching you?” I know that seasons of hardship are often seasons of growth, however painful they may be. Every mature Christian can testify to the Lord’s sanctifying work through suffering. So in September, when I began to recognize just how challenging my semester would be, I expected to come out on the other side with a deeper, sweeter dependence on the Lord. But I don’t know if that came true. I struggled to understand what it all meant―why my life felt like a rat race, a daily marathon on repeat. I felt very weak and very weary. And I struggled to come to terms with just how overwhelmed I felt. It was just schoolwork, right? I wasn’t mourning a loss or facing a terminal diagnosis. I didn’t want to be melodramatic about the very ordinary difficulties of life. I didn’t want to be ungrateful for the blessings of education or living in New York or being busy with good things.
I do know that I am far more convinced of my weakness. I don’t just mean that I am weak because I am a limited human being with finite time, energy, and resources. I mean that I am spiritually weak. I am far more immature than I thought. I have learned just how susceptible I am to anxiety, discouragement, and weariness. I have learned how forgetful I am of the Lord’s faithfulness, like the Israelites wandering in the desert who doubted God again and again, days after seeing the parting of the Red Sea and tasting his provision of food and water. I have learned how foolish I am to reject the Lord’s comfort, like the Moabites in Isaiah 16 who rejected God’s offer of shelter and chose to wallow in despair and doom.
Have I been faced with hard circumstances? I think so. Have I responded by consistently running to the Lord? No, not always. That is the hardest part of it all―not the weariness itself, but the knowledge that I have failed to respond as faithfully as I hoped to. It would all be worth it, easily, if I could see the fruit of the Spirit so clearly in my own life. But I am rather disappointed with myself.
In all of this, however, what has been my comfort and boast is that the Lord does not waste. I may waste every opportunity for growth; I may fall prey to circumstances instead of enduring. Yet in even in that―even in my wastefulness―the Lord does not waste. He does not need me to fashion my afflictions into tools of sanctification. He is capable of doing so himself. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful” (2 Tim. 2:13). In this season of reflection and tempered regret, my faith is not in my faith, but in God. He will bring good even where my faithfulness has faltered.
After all, this is not unique to me. I have been studying the book of Isaiah this year. The question at the heart of Isaiah is simple: will God’s people, Judah, trust God? It is a nation besieged, weak, and afraid, threatened by the invading Assyrians, tempted to flee to Babylon and Egypt for help. Danger looms. The kings of Judah build stronger walls and an aqueduct to channel water into Jerusalem safely. The question, still, is the same. Will they trust God? Or will they turn to their walls and their swords, their human schemes and alliances?
The prophet’s present reality is dire. Isaiah compares Judah to a deathly ill body (1:5–6), a prostitute (1:21), an unfruitful vineyard (5:4). The nation is afflicted by the rule of unfaithful kings, the breakdown of social order, famine and desolation. The book of Isaiah is a book of judgment against Tyre, Moab, Syria, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, and yes, against Judah. Will Judah trust God? The odds seem stacked against them. And we must recognize that it is not easy for a nation under threat of invasion, plunder, slavery, death, and exile―in short, losing everything―to trust God. Will Judah trust God?
Yes. And no. Hezekiah does, and the Assyrian threat is averted in a miraculous act of divine intervention. But a century later, a sinful, unrepentant Judah falls to Babylon. Isaiah records Hezekiah’s faith even as he predicts a future exile. The faith of kings like Hezekiah is not in vain―the Lord truly does spare Judah―but the nation is ultimately, desperately faithless. It is because of Israel’s lack of faith in God that he sends his people into exile. How can sinful, sin-cursed Israel trust God? How can a sinner have faith in God?
The choice of faith is a genuine decision. Will I trust God? It matters what we say and what we do in response. Hezekiah escaped the doom of exile and death because of his faith. The constant choice laid before me, to trust God or to not, was a real choice. It matters that I did trust him, at times. It matters that I found it so very difficult to do so. It matters that I failed, too.
Yet at the same time, the Bible does not care to hide from us the ugly reality that we all, even believers, will fail to trust God. We will fail, as I did, as Israel did, to trust God. We will fail to rise to the occasion; we will fail to muster up faith to meet the challenge. I say this not merely to be a pessimist with a low view of human nature, but to encourage my soul and yours. For it is to this wicked, twisted, faithless people that Isaiah speaks words of great comfort, of a coming “day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow” (30:26). It is to this people, still afraid and afflicted, that Isaiah promises “her warfare is ended . . . her iniquity is pardoned” (40:2).
Israel failed. She went astray. She did not learn from God’s blessing and God’s discipline. But what mattered more than the strength of her faith was God’s faithfulness. God promised and purposed to bring her out of exile, to make of her a beautiful city and a holy people. He used even Israel’s faithlessness to show his mercy. He made “all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). All things―including their failure.
I am certain it was not easy for Isaiah and the remnant of God’s people to believe that God would bring good even out of their sin. It is never easy to believe the promise of Romans 8:28 when our most tangible, present reality looks hopeless. It is never easy to believe in the goodness of God’s providence when we look to the uncertain, desperate future. And I am finding that it is sometimes even harder to believe in God’s providence when looking back at a hard, weary season. It is then that I feel insufficient for the question, “What has God been teaching you?” I don’t fully know yet. Yet I know he works good. I know the good he brings is not dependent on my awareness of it. I know he wastes nothing―even my imperfect faith.
There is a hymn inspired by the end of Habakkuk that carried me through many weary mornings this year. In the words of Connie Dever, “All my times are in his hands” and “He works good in all his plans.”² Here, in the providence of God, we overcome. For “this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4). And this faith is not in ourselves nor in the strength of our own faith, but in a God who works good in all his plans.
Discouragement, at least in my experience, is often amplified and prolonged by a sinful refusal to be encouraged. For the Christian, encouragement is always at hand, not necessarily in our immediate circumstances but in the present providence of our God and his future promises. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to “rejoice always” (1 Thess. 5:16). At the same time, we must remember that pain and sorrow are the unavoidable effects of a fallen world. The discouraged Christian must remember that even Jesus was “troubled” (John 11:33), “wept” (Luke 19:41), and felt “very sorrowful, even to death” (Matt. 26:38). It is therefore not always easy to determine what part, or how much, of our discouragement is sinful. To the question Am I just discouraged because my faith isn’t strong enough?, the answer often lies in the gray area of “maybe,” “partly,” and “probably.”
Connie Dever, “Though the Fig Tree,” Capitol Hill Baptist Church, recorded April 3, 2024, on The Dead’s Alive, 2024.