When you’re going through a hard time don’t get stuck; God will make a way starting with a word.
How ever this post ended up with your attention, just know that it’s not a coincidence. God sees you. He knows you. He loves you unconditionally.
We all go through hard times. My friend Jon is recovering from surgery which did not provide a hoped for outcome. A younger colleague died suddenly and tragically in a car accident last week, leaving his family in shock and mourning. Our friends in Ukraine are going through the most devastating period of a 4½ year war.
What do you do when you feel stuck? When it looks like there’s no way forward.
Where is God?
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
A Word From God
Eight years ago, Jocelyn and I were on a holiday when she had an experience that changed her life. We thought her experience was so relatable that we published a book about it. Months before she had a life-threatening diagnosis God spoke to her a word of peace. Before she had a need God provided a source of strength.
Three months later she heard the dire words, you have cancer. And she was sustained through five years of diagnosis, surgery, and remission by the words, “You’re going to be OK.”
Sincere as I might be, my reassurance to Jocelyn in crisis is not as convincing as God’s reassurance. Those words were literally her protection when she was assaulted by anxiety.
Trust
Kristen Fersovich was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in 2011. God’s words sustained her during an unimaginably hard time. Her source of faith, hope, and joy were those words. There was a time where she felt stuck. She wasn’t getting better, but she wasn’t getting worse. She was praying and trying remedies. In a time of desperate prayer, she felt reassured by God that all would be OK for her and her family. Kristen told me and others often, “I trust you, Lord” is how she was getting through. She was assured that God was good and that He had her back and would see her through even if her diagnosis ended in death. (Ornament)
When you’re going through a hard time don’t get stuck in the hard time.
Don’t allow the hard time to become all there is.
Counsel
In a hard season my counsel, if I were to give counsel, would be, find a place where you can pray. Maybe it’s a special place for you. And just say, “Jesus I’m going through a hard time and I need a word from you to get me through this.” And then just sit in the silence for a while.
Stay there in that special place, on that park bench, in that path through the woods, in that prayer closet, wherever it is just open up your heart say, “Jesus I’m going through a hard time but what I need right now is a word from you to sustain me.”
And then sit in silence.
You know what’s going to happen?
The word will come.
It’ll be brief. It’ll be short.
You don’t have to write it down.
You won’t forget it.
It’ll just settle into your soul. You’ll be able to make it.
A Psalm For You
I found great reassurance in the testimony of the psalmist David:
Cast your cares on the Lord
and he will sustain you;
he will never let
the righteous be shaken.
23 But you, God, will bring down the wicked
into the pit of decay;
the bloodthirsty and deceitful
will not live out half their days.
But as for me, I trust in you.
(Psalm 55:22,23)
Do you know someone in a hard time? Would you share this post with them. And share it to social media for people you know but may not know they are going through a hard time. Please post a comment. Thank you.
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