I once detailed the story to you of getting my Dad’s car stuck in the sand on Judy’s and my honeymoon. Yikes! That was frustrating and a bit frightening. There are stories of people getting stuck in a broken elevator…sometimes for days! I can tell you that it would only take a few hours for me to be overwhelmed inside that elevator box. Others have been stuck in bathrooms or cars. Crazy times that have often had lasting effects on those stuck.

More challenging is the thought of being stuck in a life situation that seems hopeless. A challenging marriage. A difficult ministry. A spiritual dryness that leaves us down, depressed, and…well…feeling stuck.

If you relate to that you are not alone. Many people have been there in their lives and their ministry. Good people. Famous people. Some of God’s choicest servants in His Word went through such experiences. David was in the pit of despair. Stuck in the mud at the bottom of a pit with no clear way out. Elijah saw great victory on Mount Carmel but soon found himself running and hiding. Stuck and depressed. Yep…you are in good company when you feel stuck in life.

Mark Jobe is the President of Moody Bible Institute, taking that role after several decades of leading an inner city church in Chicago. He details his own personal time of being stuck in his book Unstuck: Out of Your Cave, Into Your Call. Jobe was a 21-year-old young man, right out of school, when he accepted the call to this declining church in the midst of a tough area of Chicago.

It was only a few months before he was completely depleted and almost defeated by the magnitude of the job and the lack of anything that resembled success. A doctor told him his health was at risk if he didn’t get some rest and out from under the pressure he felt. That reality only seemed to make things worse for Mark Jobe…but it also led him to a revelation.

After several days of questioning God and wondering why the Lord had brought him to this point, to a dead-end situation, Jobe finally quieted his spirit to the point where God could speak to his heart.

The revelation? In Mark Jobe’s words:

“…I had become too busy with my own mission to make time to listen to God. The voice of people’s needs and my drive to succeed had made me slip away from the most important call, my own walk with God.”

What the Lord revealed to Mark Jobe in those critical days positioned this young pastor to become a great leader, to build a great church, to rescue desperate souls, and to point all to Jesus.

I’ve been there. Maybe you have, too. Trying so hard, for all the right reasons, to be successful in the thing that the Lord has put before you. As a leader, you feel the mandate to lead…and to lead successfully. You read the books, you put in the extra hours, you take the “hits” from employees and volunteers, and even from family and friends. Yet you valiantly soldier on. On your own.

Mark Jobe began to pray, “Forgive me for attempting to do in my own strength what only You can do in the power of Your Spirit.”

Is God whispering to you as you read these words? Does this feeling of being stuck resonate in your heart? Maybe it is time to quiet your heart, shut out the distractions, and remember the words of the Lord through the Psalmist:

Be still, and know that I am God!… Psalm 46:10 NLT

Stuck? You don’t have to stay stuck. There is a way out. A way up.