August 22, 2025 Devo

Say this out loud: “I know what I know.” Now say it again. If you’re having a really bad day, you may want to say it one more time. Why? Because some days, what you know is all you have to hang onto. If you read Psalm 88 in its entirety, it’s depressing. It’s described as a song to be sung to the tune “The Suffering of Affliction.” Sounds like something you’d like to start your day off with, right? The writer seems to have fallen into a pit of despair and can’t seem to get out. There are no great words of hope in this psalm. The psalmist cries out to God and hears nothing back. He looks and looks for Him, but he can’t see Him. He asks for relief, but no relief comes. He ends with a line of haunting loneliness. “Darkness is my closest friend.” Wow.
But I want you to notice something that isn’t easily apparent. In spite of it all, the writer keeps calling out to God. He can’t see God, feel God, or hear God, but he keeps calling out to Him. Why? Because he KNOWS God is still there. That knowledge trumps his human emotions. That knowledge is greater than his suffering, grieving, or feelings of abandonment. That knowledge is the final stake that he drives in the ground when all evidence of God is gone. He knows what he knows. It is his foothold in the consuming darkness. He has no idea how long this painful time will last. But His God will still be there when pain and darkness are long gone. That is what he KNOWS.
I can’t begin to tell you how powerful this truth is. There are times you won’t see God. There are seasons you won’t hear God. There are experiences you will go through, and you won’t feel God. If your faith hinges on “experiencing” God in those moments, your faith will fail. Anchor your faith in something more certain. Anchor your faith in what you KNOW. You KNOW God is real. You KNOW God is there. You KNOW God loves you fully and unconditionally and eternally. Bury His Word and His past Faithfulness deep in your heart. You KNOW these times of misery will eventually pass. When the darkness surrounds you and the presence of God seems to be just beyond your reach, drive a stake of certainty in the ground. Not based on what you see, hear, or feel, but a stake in what you KNOW. You know what you know.
Soon, this pain will be a memory. Soon, this darkness will lift. These fogs of despair may feel as if they will last forever. But they won’t. The Light of God’s love will eventually dispel the darkness, and you will see, hear, and feel Him once again. So let the roots of your faith go deep beneath the high and low tides of human emotion. You know what you know. And that is enough. That’s God’s Word for you today.