When Your Life Is Hard
Hey, I’m down to the final week of the Walk in the Word Bus Tour. Albany (NY) on Tuesday night, Buffalo on Wednesday, and we finish in my homeland of Canada in Toronto, Ontario, on Thursday night.
In every city, I have preached a message entitled, “Why Trials?” from the series When Life Is Hard. It resonates with everyone because you are either in a trial, coming out of a trial, or about to enter a trial. Knowing that to be true, I’d like to leave you with some hope for when your life is hard.
Counting our trials as joy is only one of the many truths we’ve learned. It’s hard to absorb them all in one brushstroke. Depending on where you are in your walk with Christ and specifically where you are in your season of difficulty, these truths have hit you in different ways. Praise God that our feet are not stuck in mud but running hard after God and all that He has for us.
So, I want to make sure that you have four lessons for yourself. We need to place these truths into our hearts and into our heads to remind ourselves what to think and believe as we walk through the times when life is hard.
Let these truths nourish your soul. You just flat out need to have
them . . .
• when crazy thoughts steal your sleep in the middle of the night.
• when an unexpected storm threatens your home or your future or your loved ones.
• when what you thought was safe is hijacked by someone else’s sin.
• when God enrolls you in some graduate-level course in character development.
In these times and countless more, these four passages from God’s Word and four principles can’t be far from your mind.
1 Peter 4, Hebrews 12, James 1, 2 Corinthians 12
Principle 1
Every trial I face is allowed by God for my ultimate good.
Principle 2
Trials need not steal my joy.
Principle 3
God is never more present than when His children are suffering.
Principle 4
Until I embrace my trial in unwavering submission to God, I will not reap the good.
I’ve said it for years: There is nothing good that God brings into your life by way of transformation that He doesn’t bring through the funnel of perseverance. If you let God place perseverance into your life, He can truly make you what He wants you to be.
Categorized as: Blog, From James, Trials, When Life is Hard
