My friend is enduring a brutal divorce. His wife has been unfaithful, and now she’s attacking his character and draining their savings as their case lumbers through the courts. Every kind gesture is thrown back in his face, either with curses or as a way to wrangle more from the divorce settlement.

And yet something strange—something supernatural—is going on within him. Even as his marriage and family are crumbling, he’s drawing closer to God. Rather than blaming God for his suffering and injustice, he’s depending on Him for everything—his children, income, and even his sanity. He’s using his agonizing crisis as an unlikely opportunity to love God more.

C. H. Spurgeon explained that desertion provides an unparalleled opportunity to declare our allegiance to God—for it hurts at the deepest level. He said, “When you trust God and a friend, there is a question whether it is God you trust or the friend. But when the friend has left you and only God is near, no question remains. If you and I are walking together and a dog follows us, who knows which is the dog’s master? But when you go off to the left and I turn to the right, all men will see which one of us owns the dog by seeing whom he follows.”

This truth is what David discovered in Psalm 55. He wished for “wings like a dove; then I would fly away and rest!” (Psalm 55:6). But knowing that he couldn’t escape from his turmoil, David chose to bundle up the whole stinking mess and hand it over to the Lord. “I will call on God,” said David, “and the Lord will rescue me” (Psalm 55:16). Spurgeon concluded, “If you can trust God alone, then you are really trusting Him! . . . Then you are a believer, and there is no mistake about it.”

NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: 1 Samuel 8:6-22