Out of the Ashes

During my sabbatical, I had the distinct honor and privilege of driving from Minnesota to Georgia while my family got to fly.

I actually enjoy a good road trip. I like the quiet, the time to think, listen, and especially pray. Somewhere in Georgia, I felt a prompting from the Holy Spirit to begin praying about a season of breakthrough—a season where some things that have gone on longer than they should finally begin to turn.

I couldn't shake that thought.

Maybe you've been in a difficult season for a long time. You're tired. You're empty. You've prayed about it more times than you can count, and you're wondering when something is finally going to change.

I want to encourage you with something:

You may be a whole lot closer than you think.

There’s a story from the earliest days of Jamestown about a chaplain named Robert Hunt. The journey to the New World was difficult from the beginning. Storms delayed them. Disease and famine devastated the colony. Many of the people who arrived with him didn't survive.

Hunt initially held church services underneath the sail of a ship stretched between trees. Eventually, the settlers built a small church. It wasn't impressive—a simple structure with a dirt floor—but it was a place to worship.

Then a fire swept through the fort.

The church burned. Hunt's library burned. According to accounts from the colony, nearly everything he owned was gone except the clothes on his back.

At some point, Hunt had a decision to make. Do I build again? He did.

I think every one of us eventually faces a moment like that. Something we thought would always be there isn't there anymore. A relationship changes. A dream falls apart. We experience loss. Something we've spent years building burns to the ground, and suddenly we're sitting in the ashes asking ourselves, What do I do now?

Proverbs 24:16 says, “For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again.”

That's interesting to me because we don't usually associate falling with righteous people.

But righteousness doesn't mean you won't have bad days.

It means the bad day doesn't get the final word.

There is something in the people of God that rises again.

You see that clearly in the life of David.

By the time we reach 1 Samuel 30, David has been running from Saul for years. He's been anointed to become king, but he doesn't have the position yet. He knows something about where God has promised to take him, but he has no idea how he's going to get there.

For the previous sixteen months, David has been living in Philistine territory. He doesn't really have a nation to call home.

Then he and his men return to Ziklag. When they arrive, the city is burning. The Amalekites have attacked it, taken their wives and children captive, and carried away everything they owned. David has lost his home. His family is gone. His possessions are gone.

And then the men he's been leading become so overwhelmed with grief that they begin talking about stoning him. That's a bad day.

Everything seems to be converging at once. David is exhausted, grieving, confused, and surrounded by the ashes of what used to be his life.

But then 1 Samuel 30:6 gives us the first indication that David is about to rise:

“David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.”

David didn't pretend everything was okay. He didn't ignore his grief. He didn't convince himself that losing everything wasn't painful.

He strengthened himself in the Lord. That's spiritual maturity.

There will be moments in your life when nobody else can encourage you for you. The people around you may be discouraged themselves. Sometimes you have to learn how to take responsibility for your own spiritual condition and strengthen yourself in God.

A mentor once told me, “When you're in a crisis, the sooner you can get out of your head and into your spirit, the better off you're going to be.”

Your mind wants to obsess over every detail.

How did this happen?

What am I going to do?

What if it gets worse?

How am I going to fix this?

Eventually, we can think ourselves in circles trying to solve things we don't have enough information to solve.

Sometimes you need to stop rehearsing the problem and start strengthening your spirit.

When you get physically sick, people start loading up on vitamin C. I think there are spiritual seasons where you need to overload on a different kind of vitamin.

You need the W-O-R-D.

Read the Word.

Pray the Word.

Sing the Word.

Listen to the Word.

Meditate on the Word.

Put something into your spirit that will help you rise.

Because when you get courage, somebody else can borrow it from you.

That's what David does. He strengthens himself in the Lord, and then he does something else that I think is incredibly important. He prays again.

David calls for the priest and inquires of the Lord: “Shall I pursue this raiding party? Will I overtake them?” God answers him: “Pursue them. You will certainly overtake them and succeed in the rescue.”

What's interesting is that David had spent the previous sixteen months in Philistine territory, and during that period the biblical narrative doesn't record him inquiring of the Lord the way we repeatedly see him do elsewhere.

Then he reaches one of the lowest moments of his life. And David prays again. Maybe that's the word for somebody. Pray again.

Maybe it's been a while.

Maybe disappointment made you quiet.

Maybe you prayed about something for so long that eventually you stopped asking.

Maybe you don't even know exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the way prayer stopped being your first response.

Come back. Inquire of the Lord again.

If you need a word from God, start with His Word. Open the Psalms. Somewhere in those 150 chapters, you'll find language for just about every human experience—fear, grief, disappointment, anger, hope, joy, waiting, victory.

Find the words that describe where you are and pray them back to God.

David prayed again, and God told him one thing: Pursue.

So David moved. And while he was moving, God put something in his path that David never could have planned.

David and his men find an Egyptian abandoned in a field. He had been a servant of the Amalekites, became sick, and was left behind.

On the surface, he looks insignificant to David's story.

But David gives him food and water. Eventually, they discover that this man knows exactly where the Amalekites have gone.

The man everyone else threw away becomes the GPS David needs to recover everything he lost. I call those the providential surprises of God.

When you're rising out of a difficult season, pay attention to what God puts along your path.

You'll be amazed at where help comes from.

You'll be amazed at who encourages you.

You'll be amazed at the relationship that begins on one of the worst days of your life and becomes one of the greatest gifts God ever gives you.

Some of the best friends and mentors I've had entered my story during difficult seasons. I didn't know I needed them. I couldn't have planned for them. But God placed wisdom, encouragement, and direction inside people I didn't see coming. That's providence.

What someone else considers insignificant may become incredibly valuable in the hands of God. And with the Egyptian's help, David finds the Amalekites.

He fights. He wins. And then Scripture gives us this beautiful statement:

“David recovered everything.” Nothing was missing.

Don't ever underestimate God's ability to restore you.

Sometimes we overestimate the enemy's ability to destroy and underestimate God's ability to restore. God can restore what you thought was finished.

He can restore identity.

He can restore resources.

He can restore purpose.

He can redeem lost time.

He can rebuild things you thought had burned beyond repair.

And in David's story, it gets even better.

David doesn't simply recover what was taken. He also takes the spoil from the Amalekites. By the time he walks out of this situation, he has more than he had when he entered it. He takes some of that overflow and begins blessing others with it.

That's the kind of God we serve.

He is more than enough, and I've found that He often gives more than enough.

There are seasons when you get to the other side, look back, and realize God didn't simply sustain you. Somehow, through all of it, He increased you.

You have more wisdom.

More compassion.

More faith.

More resilience.

More testimony.

And now what God produced in you during your difficult season becomes something you can use to bless somebody else.

But here's the part of David's story that I find incredible.

David couldn't know what was about to happen next.

He was standing in the ashes of Ziklag believing he had lost everything.

His family was gone.

His home was burned.

His men had turned against him.

Years had passed since Samuel first anointed him and told him he would become king.

From David's perspective, God's promise may have looked farther away than ever.

But he was actually right on the edge of a dramatic change.

Saul's reign was coming to an end, and David was about to step into the promise he had been carrying for years.

Think about that.

On the day David thought he had lost everything, God was already moving him toward what He had promised.

That's why I want to encourage you not to quit in the ashes.

Your darkest moment doesn't necessarily mean you're farther away from God's promise.

You may actually be closer than you think.

You may be exhausted.

You may be confused.

You may be looking at something that seems impossible to rebuild.

But strengthen yourself in the Lord. Pray again. Listen for His direction. Start moving when He tells you to move. Watch for His providential surprises along the way. And trust His ability to restore what looks lost.

The righteous fall, but they rise again.

So if you're sitting in the ashes today, don't assume that's where your story ends.

God may already be engineering something you cannot see yet.

And the breakthrough you've been praying for may be a whole lot closer than you think.