Hey what’s up everyone!!! So I know it has been a couple weeks since you’ve heard from me. To be totally honest with you, I have been dealing with some very deep things in my life, things I can’t go into detail with, but it caused me to get into a deep deep sadness. Can anyone relate to that? During this time, I really needed to build my confidence in God, and to really assess how much I really believed His promises. Has anyone ever doubted God? Well to be real, I did in this time. I doubted His love and His provision.
Yes this was a very harsh reality for me. There is a BUT in that statement. In that moment, God encapsulated me with His loving arms. I am so thankful for a Heavenly Father who doesn’t give up on me, can I get an amen!! My whole point is that there is a reason for the pain. There is a reason for why we go through things in this life that bring us down. The reason is that God is wanting us to fall on Him. To rely that even though He doesn’t promise us a life free of trouble, He does promise that He will be there never leaving nor forsaking us. He is saying to us that even in the midst of the hardest times, the reason is to build us up and to build our trust in Him.
I will totally agree, it is difficult to see God’s loving provision when all we see is the brokenness in our lives. But, God is not thwarted by our doubts. He totally understands our uncertainty and He understands our humanity. That does not mean, however, that we just crumble at the first sign of trouble. It means that we dig into His word and we press into Him to find the reason behind the struggle. Jesus tells us to “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:2-4). Also, Scripture tells us, And let us gaze at Jesus, him who is The Author and The Perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was his, endured the cross and ignored the shame, and he sits upon the right side of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2). These verses are so key because they challenge us to look at our negative circumstances in a different perspective. How do we count it joy when all we feel is hurt and pain?
Well to answer that question, I say this. We count it joy because it gives an opportunity for God to show Himself true of His promise that He will comfort the brokenhearted and He will give rest to the weary of heart. Secondly, Jesus is writing our story, and when He leads us to the victory and when He heals us, He gets the spotlight from our story. I can’t even tell you how joyful my heart gets when I can tell people about what God has done in my life. It does not mean that every pieces is together, but I have faith that Jesus has not left me, nor will He leave me. He is continually fighting for us even when we are too wounded to fight. So I encourage us to lean on Jesus and let Him fight for us. Also, we are challenged to look at Jesus as the Perfecter of our faith. Because Jesus went through such agony for our sins, what we go through doesn’t even compare, so we can rest in the fact that Jesus knows how we feel and He desires to come along side of us and guide us to healing. How comforting is that???
Overall, there is purpose behind your pain. There is a reason why we go through trials and difficult situations in our lives. It is because at the end of the pain we see that joy has come for us, and that Jesus desires to meet us in our pain and turn that into victory. So let’s rewire our thinking to look at Jesus for help and guidance through these very hard situations, that we may receive confidence in the middle of the darkness. When we do this, we will find the ultimate reason of why we go through hard times, which is to build us up to bring people to Light. Let us all stay encouraged and built up in Jesus name.
Love y’all,
Ryan W.
