I am an optimistic and positive person for the most part. I usually see the glass half full. Unless it’s when I’m really thirsty, then the glass is empty, ’cause I just drank it all.

Sometimes, I have serious doubts. Sometimes, it feels like my dreams and goals are just out of reach and nothing will really ever change. Sometimes, I’m not even really sure what it is I’m reaching for.

Everybody has those times, if they’re honest. Everybody doubts, everybody questions, and as the old R.E.M. song says, everybody hurts.

The question is, Will you still believe even when common sense tells you not to? Will you speak your faith even when you don’t feel it and the words coming out of your mouth feel fake and fraudulent? Will you still hold on?

The old cliche is true. It really is darkest just before the dawn. I’ve found that just when I feel like I’m at my lowest ebb, that’s when I see God moving in my circumstances and in my life.

The promises of God are just as true in the dark as they are in the light. He is just as faithful in the storm as in the sunshine. He is just as near when you can’t feel Him as when you can.

I’ve said it before many times, but it’s true. What you think may lie to you. What you feel may lie to you. But God won’t. Ever.

So many people in the Bible had times when they felt God’s promises were hopelessly out of reach. I think about David and Abraham as examples. David when he was running for his life from Saul and Abraham when he and Sarah were still childless and eligible for Social Security.

But they held on to the promises of God even when everything in them (and probably everyone around them) told them not to, and that faith was rewarded in the nick of time in God’s perfect timing.

May you and I hold on as tenaciously and as stubbornly as they did.

It will be so much more than worth it in the end.