The Day Before Deliverance

After our third miscarriage, I remember feeling so defeated.  Why keep trying to have another baby if I'm just going to miscarry again? Why put myself through the torture of believing God is going to help me and then watching him not? As these thoughts ran through my mind, a friend of mine encouraged me to hang on just a little bit long.

"Your deliverance might be just one day away," she told me. And though in our case, we still haven't had a healthy pregnancy, our deliverance did come shortly after that third loss. In the form of adoption.

As the months have passed and I've dug deeper and deeper into the Biblical heroes who suffered, I've seen many of them experience similar situations. Situations in which it would have been easier to give up, but they instead chose to hang on just one day longer.

It happened with Hannah, when she thought having a baby would never be a part of her future.
She hung on, and God showed up.

It happened with Daniel, when he was thrown into the lion's den and left for dead.
He hung on, and God showed up.

It happened with the disciples, when their leader died on the cross. 
They hung on, and three days later, God showed up.

In the church, we spend a lot of time focusing on Friday when Jesus died and Sunday when he rose from the dead. What I want to focus on in this post, though, is Saturday. The day before deliverance.

Can you imagine what the disciples must have felt like on Saturday?
Scared. Abandoned. Alone. Defeated. Hopeless.
Probably a lot like I felt after our third miscarriage and probably a lot like you might be feeling now.

Even though Jesus told them about the resurrection beforehand, they didn't understand what he meant. We know the end of the story. We know Jesus came back from the dead. But the disciples didn't yet know that. Not on Saturday.

What would have happened if those 11 men wouldn't have hung on just one more day? If Peter, the disciple who helped start the very first church, wouldn't have hung on? Or if John, the beloved disciple who wrote many of our books of the Bible, wouldn't have hung on? The world today would be drastically different if these men would have given up.

So it is with you. I don't know when your deliverance is going to come. And I don't know in what form. What I do know is this: eventually, if you hang on, God is going to show up for you.

Please hang on. Who knows? Your deliverance might be just one day away.

To read the first two posts about Biblical heroes who suffered, click on these links:
When God Doesn't Show Up (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego)
If God Were Really With Me (Joseph)