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Podcast Episode: Finding Peace In Hard Seasons

You know that feeling at 2 a.m. when your brain decides it’s the perfect time to schedule a full audit of everything that’s ever gone wrong?

Chris Miller has been writing this week about the places where faith meets real pressure — sleepless nights, discouragement, and the quiet fear that God has stopped paying attention.

Which, honestly, covers most of a Tuesday.

Let’s start with the nights when anxiety won’t let you rest.

Anxiety And Rest

The question this post sits with is a practical one — when fear and insecurity take over at night, what does trust in God actually look like in the dark?

The post reaches for Proverbs 3 as the anchor, setting up the promise directly: “You can go to bed without fear; you will lie down and sleep soundly. You need not be afraid of sudden disaster or the destruction that comes upon the wicked, for the LORD is your security.”

The upshot is that security isn’t the absence of problems — it’s confidence that God is handling what you cannot. The post closes on Psalm 4:8: “In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, O LORD, will keep me safe.”

And the practical steps in the post are grounded — name what’s actually weighing on you, remember past faithfulness, stop solving tomorrow’s problems at midnight.

That last one lands. Rest, the post argues, is sometimes an act of trust rather than avoidance. Which sets up a harder question — what about the weight that isn’t just nighttime anxiety, but accumulated discouragement?

Discouragement And Hope

This segment is about the moments that feel permanently broken — the spilled water you can’t scoop back up. The regret, the fractured relationship, the season you’d undo if you could.

“Don’t Drown in the Spilled Water” opens with David in the middle of family turmoil, and a wise woman’s words cut through: “Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But that is not what God desires; rather, he devises ways so that a banished person does not remain banished from him.”

The word “devises” is doing real work there. Not passive acceptance — intentional planning. God is not waiting at a distance for you to clean yourself up first.

That’s exactly how the post frames it. The invitation isn’t “fix yourself, then return” — it’s simply “come back to Me.” Your past does not have the final word.

And “Fighting Discouragement and Hopelessness” pushes that further, into the emotional honesty the Psalms model. Psalm 42:5 is the hinge: “Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God. I will praise him again.”

What that post emphasizes is that choosing hope often precedes the feeling of hope. The Psalmist declared praise before the discouragement lifted. The post also makes a point worth noting — experiencing these emotions doesn’t make someone less faithful. David and Jeremiah both walked through deep sorrow.

So discouragement isn’t a detour from faith. Sometimes it’s the road.

Which connects naturally to the question underneath both posts — what do you do when discouragement shades into feeling genuinely forgotten?

Feeling Forgotten By God

This is the oldest version of the question — Israel in captivity, wondering if God had simply moved on. The post on “Where is God? Why is God not answering?” asks whether our circumstances today are really so different.

Isaiah 40 is the text, and the post pulls out verse 28 as its anchor: “Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding.”

So the plain-language version is: whatever is buckling you, it isn’t buckling Him. The post makes that contrast explicit — the pressures that exhaust us don’t cause God to flinch.

The post organizes Isaiah 40 into three movements. God is all-powerful. God desires to help — verse 29 says He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. And God will get you through, which the Israelites’ own story demonstrates.

The payoff is verses 30 and 31 — the eagle wings passage. The people asking “where is God” are the same people the text promises will run and not grow weary.

The gap between the question and the promise is where trust lives. Isaiah’s point isn’t that the hard season disappears — it’s that you don’t walk through it alone.


Sleepless nights, spilled water, silence from heaven — these posts are covering the full range of what it feels like when faith is under pressure.

And the consistent answer is that God is still moving, even when the evidence isn’t obvious yet. More of that next time.

Exchanging Gifts

Many people will be at the store the day after Christmas exchanging gifts. It is normal to receive a gift that is the wrong color, wrong size, or in some cases, just not desirable. Making these exchanges has become part of the Christmas tradition. Stores may even have extra staff to ensure the lines at the return counter do not become too long. Gifts can go back, and we can leave the store with something even better. There are many things in life we may desire to exchange, especially from the past couple years.

Gloomy is a description of many events from the past couple years. From global headlines to personal tragedies, there has been much in the way of bad news. Absorbing it all is burdensome and weary. It leaves us longing for rest just like the Israelites in Isaiah’s day.

Isaiah was delivering the Lord’s message to people amid much gloom and despair. They were toiling physically, probably spent emotionally, and struggling spiritually. Amid it all, the Lord sends Isaiah to bring hope of rest.

In chapter 9, Isaiah reminds the people this gloom will not go on forever. A different day is coming; a rest like none other is coming. Verses 6-7 say, “For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders, and he will be called wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s armies will make this happen.”

Though these words were spoken hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, they point directly to him. Israel was on the lookout for a political messiah. Someone who would establish rule and slam their enemies to the ground, but God had a different plan. God was working to establish an eternal rest. This would not be a rest just for the Israelites, but it would be a rest for you and me. This rest would not be temporary but eternal, and on Christmas day, the child that brings this rest arrived.

His arrival was not in a grand fashion, but he sure made a grand difference.

As you read this today, you may feel like the Israelites. Physically, you are toiling and don’t know how you are going to have the strength to continue. Emotionally, you may be spent, and your spiritual life is a constant struggle. As Isaiah says, the Lord offers rest to you. Jesus, in Matthew 11:28-30, invites us to exchange all of this weariness for his rest and peace. Allow this exchange to happen. Trade your gloom for peace, your despair for hope in Jesus.

Host of the Dwell On These Things podcast John Stange goes deeper into this concept in this episode. Check it out!

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Finding Peace After Life's Mistakes Quick Encouragement from getencouraged.blog

Life can sometimes feel as if it is spilled water. Past mistakes and words we wish we could take back soaking into the ground beyond our control. Moments like these can be met with encouragement from Scripture.Visit https://getencouraged.blog for more.
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