YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION

"I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we can confidently say, 'the LORD is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?" Hebrews
 13:5b-6


Do you ever feel all alone?  Trapped?  Does your life feel as though it is cut off from everyone else's?  Like you are buried with no hope of escape?  Do you wonder WHY this has to happen to YOU?

Do you wonder where God is in your affliction?

Let me encourage you.

I can think of 33 men who felt LITERALLY the same way.  Buried, trapped, forgotten.  But when they came to the surface yesterday in  AMAZING rescue, many of them hit the ground on their knees in prayers of thanksgiving to their Lord and Savior.  Several of these men had girlfriends they had lived with for many years.  Some of them had children with these women they never married.  Some had hit a complacent, comfortable place in their marriage that thrilled no one in it.

But several of those miners made proposals of marriage to the women they loved. (one's fiancee even proposed to HIM while he was underground).  One of the couples who had slipped into a 25 year marriage quietly could not wait to renew vows.  The thing they all had in common?  They all wanted to exchange their vows in a CHURCH.  Clearly, they want to honor the God who saved them.....and wrestled with their souls.

Sometimes when we feel all alone in our predicaments, we forget two things.

1)  Satan can't wait to take advantage or our hopeless state.
2)GOD WILL NEVER LEAVE OR FORSAKE US.

Those men were in Hell, itself.  But, God met them there.  The miners' spokesman and cameraman, Mario Sepulveda said this....

"I was with God and I was with the Devil, they fought me but God won. He took me by my best hand, the hand of God and I held on to him," Sepulveda said in an interview just one hour after he was extracted from the mine.

"I never thought for one minute that God wouldn't get me out of there," he added.

Think of the worst possible darkness you have been trapped in.  Was/Is it like being trapped in an oppressive, humid, hot hole, 2300 feet below the surface of the earth?  

Then reach out....God is waiting to take you by "your best hand" and get you out of there!  It may take some time, but the blessing that is coming will be life changing.

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.  And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."