I have many personal struggles. I have deep rooted anxiety that affects me to the point I breathe shallowly while awake and when I sleep. I experience panic attacks and painfully tight muscles from stress. When in public or around new people my social anxiety takes over. I have some OCD tendencies in the way I think and behave and worry. I experience depression from time to time. But despite all that, I am not alone and God is helping me walk through it all, day by day and step by step. I want the quick fix and the miracle, but I know that God is teaching me so much in the midst of my struggles and he is helping me to overcome. He is building my faith. So I walk through each day with the LORD holding my right hand (Isaiah 41:13).
The life of a Christian is not perfect and always sunshine and roses. Even after being saved there are still struggles. There is still suffering at times, but we do not face hardship like the world or how we used to before Christ. We have hope. We serve a God who sees all of our brokenness and pain and he cares for us. He covers us with his love in the midst of our issues. God who made heaven and earth cares for us. He loves us and who can understand it. God has the immeasurable power to deliver us from even the smallest trouble to our very worst fears. This brings up a big question: why doesn’t God just take these struggles away from me?
Why? I cannot say exactly, but it is true God’s grace is enough (2 Cor. 12:9). That doesn’t mean life is easy. God can deliver us from the valley, but he usually wants us to go through the valley with him. There is much to be gained when we make it through. Our eyes are opened to the people around us who have similar struggles. We see God work in our lives and we can begin to see what he is teaching us in the midst of suffering. We come to realize like Hagar (Genesis 16) that he is with us even here in the middle of nowhere. A place where there is no hope as far as the eye can see. Maybe then the child of God can see and believe that God is always with them.
Whatever we suffer, we do not suffer alone. Jesus the Son of God suffered greatly. Isaiah 53 verse 10 states, “it was the LORD’s good plan to crush him”. At times God really asks us to go through some really terrible things, but our hope is not in this life but in eternity. Our treasures are not on this earth but the next. Everything of this world will be gone some day. Might we learn to hold onto the things perishing in this life a little less and hold onto Jesus a little more. Those who believe in Jesus, belong to him and we will live again with him. No matter what happens in this life, no matter what we lose, we have gained all we need because we have Jesus Christ, our savior (Psalms 23:1). Our lives cannot be taken. Our salvation cannot be lost. We have a Heavenly Father who is good and who loves us and nothing can take us away from him. As anyone comes to learn the character of God and who he is, they discover what a good father he is. God is a good father.
"And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them up at the last day." (John 6:39 NLT)
One lesson I have learned is that many times negative events that happen to me are not my fault. It’s easy to quickly put the blame on ourselves, but sometimes these things just happen. It’s a part of living in this broken world. God allows hard times to come, but they are never a punishment for our sin. The punishment for sin is death (Romans 6:23) which has already been paid on the cross for those who believe. We are secure in the Gospel that any terrible thing that happens to us is never because of a sin we have committed. Christ already bore all that on the cross. In other situations we may reap the consequences of our actions but the aren’t meant to stop our forward progress. God rebukes us and corrects so we can learn and mature.
In times of struggle, this question arises: where does your help come from? I think of David’s response to this question in the Psalms.
I lift up my eyes to the mountains- where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. (Psalm 121:1-2 NIV)
So this is my question to you… When you are struggling, what do you turn to? Where do you look? Where does your help come from? Perhaps you turn to this thing or that, but might you stop and begin to look up?
