One day, it’s all going fine and the next day, the bottom drops out with no real explanation. It only takes a split second for everything to change. Maybe you lost your job, or a family member had a serious accident…fill in your own personal hardship. Whether or not you are presently encountering hardship in your life, you can be certain that they will come as we live in a fallen and broken world. You can’t escape life without hurt. Jesus even said,
I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world. —John 16:33 (MSG)
The second chapter of Corinthians provides a glimpse into the hardship Paul had to endure and walk through. Five times he received the forty lashes minus one. Three times he was beaten with rods; he was stoned; three times he was shipwrecked; he spent a night and a day in the open sea; and he was constantly on the move. He had been in danger from rivers; from bandits from his own countrymen, in the city, in the country, and at sea; and from false brothers. He had labored and toiled and had often gone without sleep; he had known hunger and thirst and had often gone without food; he had also experienced coldness and nakedness.
The very credentials that once defined his place of security and identity were dumped in exchange for Jesus. Paul made a choice with life’s hardships…he gloried in them. He came to a place in his relationship with God where God became everything good and true in his life. He began to see that God shaped his character through these hardships.
When we experience hardships in life, we can let them destroy us or we can allow the Lord to walk with us through them, letting Him shape and refine us along the way. Most of us get extremely angry with God and blame Him when hard times come and we lose the opportunity to get closer to Him and miss out on what He may be trying to teach us. God understands the human heart, and He understands that for us to become all that He hopes for us, there will be seasons of hardship.
Hardships.
They will come, but how we react to them is entirely up to us. They can overwhelm as questions invade our hearts and minds. They test our perseverance because we cannot see a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. We find ourselves in situations where darkness deepens and we do not know where to turn. We can be confident that He will either cause our hardships to cease or carry us through them. In His strength we will survive. May we run to the Lord in the midst of our hardships so that we will grow nearer to Him as we learn to trust Him! Not easy.
The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart. —Proverbs 17:3 (NIV)
This time in my life was hard, but I began to slowly move in a better direction as I developed an unquenchable desire to find answers and to better understand God. Through these hardships, I am learning that He will give us the grace we need to get through them and that He is able to accomplish what He wants for our lives if we let Him. I still had the wrong perspective, that all of this was somehow His fault, and I was still angry with God, but through it all, God continued to sustain me in His grace while I sorted it all out. I once heard it said that the amazing thing about God is that He knows us and loves us anyway. God is confident to bring about all the changes that are needed in our lives. All He needs is a willing heart.
