Years ago, I prayed “I want to go deeper with You, God.” What transpired next is a result of His twisted sense of humor.
Shortly after praying this, I ended up losing my ministry and the only job I could find at the time was digging graves in a graveyard.
One day, I was digging a family grave that went down sixteen feet deep.
I had a ladder, a spade, and a bucket, and all day long, I went down, filled the bucket and brought it up the ladder. Needless to say, it wasn’t the highlight of my career. 🙂
In the midst of digging one day, my co-workers thought it would be hilarious to steal my ladder and leave me in the clay for the day. Of course, it started to rain and I was covered head-to-foot in clay.
I was standing in twelve inches of water. I’m freezing cold & hungry. I can’t work because everything had turned to soupy clay. So, I just began worshiping the Lord because there was nothing else to do.
Of course, all that was going through my mind was, “Is this your (God’s) idea of going “deeper? Literally, putting me in a pit?”
At the end of the day, the guys brought the ladder and got me out of the hole chuckling. (The next day, I brought some rope and tied that ladder around my waist!)
Several years later, I was listening to a song called “I Will Always Love You” by Joe King.
This song declares who God is for us in harsh times, and as I listened to one particular line, my mind went straight back to that moment of being in the grave and the Lord gave me an epiphany retrospectively.
“No pit is so deep that I’m not deeper still…”
If you’re in low place, He would love to be in that place with you. He won’t let go of you because things are not working, and He won’t walk away from you because you are not getting it. He will never leave you.
He will never forsake you, and He is unchanging. He never changes, and so it doesn’t matter what you’re like. It doesn’t matter how well you’re doing or how badly. He never changes. He is the same towards you on your worst day as He is on your best.
Meditate on the words of Romans 8.
Here is a whole list of things that are difficult, yet none of them can separate us from Him:
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It’s a funny thing about us. We always seem to ask the Lord, usually in a good moment, to take us deeper into Him.
As I learned, these kind of prayers are really just setting us up to experience the power of His love no matter what comes our way in life.
I hope you feel His love lavished over you today, no matter what you are going through.
PS) The video series for my last event, The Epiphany, is now available. If interested, preview all twelve sessions and sign up for a free month here.
