During the creation process, God counted days based on the previous nights. The Bible doesn’t say, ‘The morning and evening were the first day.’ It says, ‘God called…the evening and the morning…the first day’ (Genesis 1:5 KJV). That means God specialises in bringing light out of darkness – you just have to get through one to get to the other! God told Moses that the angel of death would come at night, and wherever he saw the blood of the lamb on the doorposts, the inhabitants of that house would be saved (see Exodus 12:12-13). In Exodus, we read that God ‘sent a…wind that blew all night until there was dry land…and the Israelites walked through’ (Exodus 14:21-22 CEV). The psalmist wrote, ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning’ (Psalm 30:5 NKJV). The dawn is all the more brilliant because of the darkness that came before it, just as your progress is all the more rewarding when it’s set against a backdrop of pain, gain, and breakthrough. Great mornings come by getting through rough nights. When you see somebody who’s having a great day, chances are you’re looking at somebody who has been through a long night. When you hear them shouting victory, it might be because they’ve spent the night praying and weeping before God. The Bible says, ‘Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise’ (Hebrews 10:23 NLT). Trusting God is more than just wishful thinking. It’s knowing that if He said it, He will do it. It’s realising He doesn’t just know about creation, He knows all about your circumstances too. So, ‘hold fast’.
