Meet God in Your Hard Times

Coach Micheal Burt says that after we go through adversity, we can stay beaten down, rise back up to where we were, or use the adversity as a spring board to rise above where we began.  In a lot of areas, I think he may be right.

I believe adversity affects our faith in a unique way.  I’ve certainly seen people go through job loss, a marriage breakup, or a death of a loved one and never really get back to where they were before in their faith.  Their trust in God was so shaken that they simply turned their backs on God.  I feel for those that I’ve known who have lost their faith and stay beaten down.

Victor Frankl who went through a concentration camp at the hands of the Nazis wrote:

“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing:  the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 

No matter what our situation, we choose our attitude and we choose if we’re going to trust God in our circumstances.  Our attitude is STILL our choice.

Some believe that after going through hard circumstances that you can get back to where you were, back to the norm.  I don’t believe that.  As a follower of Christ, He hasn’t called us to “the norm.”  If we only go back to “the norm,” we’re really becoming stagnant.  “The norm” is not a place to shoot for either.  God wants us to use our experiences to make us stronger.

When we go through adversity, though our faith was shaken, our foundation remains if we choose to hold onto it.  After our experience, we remember how God didn’t remove us from the situation but He walked with us through it.  We think about how His strong arms held us when we didn’t think we could go on any longer.  Maybe we know from experience that He sent people to us for comfort. The choice to continue trusting Him is ours.

When hardship and pain knock you to your knees, find God there.  He is there waiting for you.  Don’t stay the same.  Don’t go back to normal.  Let Him hold you and rise above it.