You are strong
Two Scriptures and a couple of thoughts today:
“Let them praise the Lord for His great love and for the wonderful things he has done for them. Let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and sing joyfully about His glorious acts.” - Psalm 107: 21–22“Dear brothers and dear sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete needing nothing.” - James 1:2-4
He does the work in us so we praise him with full joy!
Look at all the difficulties with the perspective of an opportunity for great growth and joy.
Woman contemplating on a bench outdoors
If we were to look at every hardship and difficulty in life as an opportunity for great joy, growth, endurance, increased faith, the ability to praise God for all He has done in His love and faithfulness, our perspectives on all challenges would change completely. I mean, really, who am I to say that God should remove all struggle and pain from my life for my own comfort and convenience? As life continues, we face hardships and challenges over and over again. There is a bigger reason for all of these struggles than just for the sake of struggling. God is building us and our character, even our mental and emotional strength to be greater. He’s loving enough to not let us sit and wallow in our own misery and mess. He gives us the opportunities, again and again, to come out of that murky place. But the thing is, we have to say yes. We have to choose the tough moment, a decision to begin stepping out of the hardship even when - especially when our circumstances don’t change. The change has to start in our minds with a decision, a choice and the more we practice these tough choices which oppose our given situation, we get stronger, and eventually things around us change. Let me ask you this; if you were to look at yourself, the state of mind, values, believes, even your sense of humor before all this went down, would you see someone different? When we’re in the middle of our struggles, surviving to that next moment doing everything we can do and surrender, we don’t see the big picture. Of course not. We’re hyper-focused on the immediate moment. And that’s okay. That’s how we push forward past the deepest darkest places. And through God’s goodness and grace, every once and a while, He’ll give us the headspace and time to gain some perspective. He'll do this not only to help us see how far we’ve come but to see all places He showed up even when we couldn’t notice. He’s there, always there. Because of this, we're able to say thank you and even at times become awestruck at His goodness in the middle of it all.Now we are more grateful and stronger than we’ve been before and kind of don’t want to go back to the person we were before the struggle. Somehow, there’s more depth to who we are. Stronger character, deeper and more well-defined values. The most important things in life become clearer, and that extra crazy noise fades into the background. You may notice, the stuff which used to really set you off your rocker now seems pretty trivial. It's growth and perspective with a fully sincere and grateful heart. Let the process happen. Let God work in your heart, life, and mind. He will make stunning beauty out of ashes again and again for any person on this earth. Hear me, please, don't let this oversimplify your pain. What you're going through is real and big. Let yourself go through the pain in a natural and healthy way. Don't feel you have to rush or force joy. Lean into God in your pain, even if you're angry at him. That's okay. Go through your hardship. And don't fear future hardships because you are stronger and wiser and way more resilient than you know.