Trusting God in Difficult Times: 3 Powerful Insights
Raindrops hang from the picnic table like glass beads on a string. Morning has come with heavy air and an ashen sky that goads us to sleep longer. Life has consisted of one rainy day after another here. It’s been a hard season of learning about trusting God in difficult times.
Perhaps you can relate.
If you could use encouragement on trusting God in difficult times, you’re in the right place today.
Trusting God in Difficult Times
What happens when the thing you prayed would never happen becomes your reality?
A friendship that was once life-giving suddenly becomes strained and difficult.
You are misunderstood in an area that matters deeply to you.
You take a hard hit on your finances, your health, your career, or your family life.
Maybe you look to the hills, and it’s hard to believe there is help on the way. Trusting God when life hurts like this doesn’t come easily.
3 Insights to Help You With Trusting God in Difficult Times
Most of us have been here. Maybe you’re in this place today. You’re wondering just when God’s help is going to show up and offer the reprieve you so desperately crave. Here are a few truths to hold onto while you wait:
1. Remind yourself that difficult times are always God’s training grounds.
What if the only way you will make it through a future struggle is today’s preparatory experience with pain?
This struggle with your health is preparing you for what is coming next. This discomfort in your marriage is deepening your commitment so that you will soar through the next season. The trial you are facing at work is teaching you to hold up under pressure.
Hold fast.
Ask God to help you trust him.
Don’t harden your heart; instead, press into him through the pain. Today’s pain prepares us for tomorrow’s battles. God wastes nothing. Keep your heart soft, and he will not waste your pain.
2. Remember that God will use this pain to shape you into his image.
I have spent a combined total of nearly 30 months couch-bound with illness. That’s more than two combined years of life. Two years of missing out on holiday gatherings with my family. Two years of looking out the window at the spruce trees and praying for the season to end. Often, trusting God didn’t come easily on that sick bed.
Before those long months of illness, I was a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” kind of woman.
Finding myself incapable of moving for months on end deepened my empathy. I became a more compassionate, gentle, and understanding woman. God humbled me and expanded my compassion for the hurting. He also slowed me down, broke me of my self-will, and shaped me into the image of Christ.
If we endure discomfort with soft hearts, God will use discomfort to shape us to the image of Christ – the image of living compassion. #compassion #pain #transformation #God Click To Tweet3. Trust that God is burning off the impurities that have been holding you back.
Today’s pain is burning off part of the impurities within you. Pain is a refining fire that will bring the joy, focus, and purposefulness you crave when you reach the other side.
The refining fires of life aren’t meant to merely burn us. God uses the fires to pull out the dross, just as the silversmith removes the dross from the precious metal. We come out of the fire shining just a bit more brightly, reflecting the Light and Love of the Savior with just a little more clarity.
The refining fires remind us of the gifts that matter most in life. They slow us down, humble us, and in the best-case scenarios, shape us.
Regardless of where your life hurts today, cling to these truths. They hold the power to carry you through the fire as you wait to gaze upon the face of the Silversmith who has never taken his eye off you.
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