Run to God When Life Gets Hard

God I pray that this post brings You glory and draws your sons and daughters closer to You. Get me out of the way and let Your words speak life into the person reading this right now. In Jesus name, amen.

When the Going Gets Tough, Worship

My life has gotten to be really complicated and difficult in the past month, and everything in me wants to run away from God and hide in a hole. I've experienced grief on a whole new level and betrayal that has taken my breath away. People I thought loved me have proven they don't, and I don't know how to respond in a way that glorifies God. My dad died, and I don't know how to feel about it, I think I'm still in shock. All I want to do is hide.

I know I can't be the only person to ever experience this level of life, in fact there was a man name Job who experienced a whole lot of life at one time and instead of running away from God when the going got tough, he ran to God and had his whole perspective changed. If you haven't had a chance to read Job I highly recommend you read it for yourself.

In it, Job worships while his life is literally falling apart. His children die, his livestock are stolen, he gets painful boils and sores all over his body, and this all happened back to back. His wife encourages him to turn away from God in his hardships, but Job responds by saying "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord... shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil? " (Job 1:21, 22). Job worshiped the name of the Lord instead of cursing Him. We could learn a thing or two from Job.

It can be so easy to stay in the sadness, but there is a God who wants to sit with you and hold your hand through it. Let Him.

God Allowed It for a reason

When life gets hard it can be so easy to be angry with God and curse His name. It's actually human nature to turn away from Him when life is even a little bit inconvenient, and we have to combat that reality. We have a choice to see things the way God does, or continue to blame Him for the things that we as humans do.

It's not God's fault that people are rude, evil, and often cruel, but He does allow it. God allows bad things to happen because He works all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes (Romans 8:28). If evil didn't exist we would never know what good was, and we would never know how good God is.

The circumstances I've experienced have started to break me, and I keep thinking about what it says in James 1:2-4 "Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it 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."

In a world where we are all seeking perfection of some kind, lets be made perfect by the God who created us. We do that by taking every heartbreak and seeing it as an opportunity to place our faith in Christ. Yes, this takes time and practice, but it is so worth it and so freeing!

There is freedom in knowing that God can take away that pain if we let him. We don't have to live in the offense, we can run to Him in our mess and watch Him make beauty from it.

So, what do I do now?

Now that we know God doesn't just let things happen just so they happen, what's next? We run to Him! How do we do that? Well, there's lots of ways. We can start with admitting to God how we are feeling.

It is crucial to our relationship with God that we are open and honest with Him. He already knows what we are feeling so why not be upfront about it? He can handle our anger, our rage, our pain, our anxiousness, all the ugly crying, and then some. He can handle it all, we just need to be open with Him.

Telling Him exactly what we are feeling releases those emotions and makes space for God to work. Failing to do so can often lead to us leaning on our own understanding (which God tells us not to do), and that can lead to us spiraling out of control. So, if we want to avoid making ourself crazy, let's give all this grief to the Lord.

Another way we can run to the Lord is by literally taking the offense as soon as it happens to us and giving it to Jesus. Meaning, tell God what happened before telling anyone else. Tell God before telling your sister, your brother, your mother, your father, your bestie, or your teacher/mentor. Give it to God first and pray for that person that hurt you, or that situation that is grieving you. When we do this, we place priority on God and we expedite our healing. And who doesn't want that?!

After you've talked to God about the situation, talk with a close friend or someone else you trust that will direct you back to Jesus. Don't go through this alone.

Finding Community

I am part of an amazing online community called The Tree. There we hold prayer calls, Bible Studies, and workshops, and we have girl chats. I have grown to love this group of women who are struggling with some similar things that I am, and some things that I am not. We hold each other accountable, we love each other, and we pray for each other.

I would highly recommend joining a community of like minded, Bible believing Christians who will redirect you back to Christ. When offenses happen (and they will) it is imperative that you have people in your life that will NOT comfort you into sin, but lovingly rebuke you and remind you of the holiness you were called to when you gave your life to Jesus (see Psalm 141:4-5 and Proverbs 27:6).

You can also chat with me here in the comments or shoot me an email, I would love to chat with you and pray for you. You do not have to go through hard things alone, God didn't create us that way, He made us for community (see Genesis 2:18). Remember you are so loved, not just by me but by God, and His love is way more effective!

Don't give the Devil or sin an open door

To wrap all this up, I want to remind you that even though hard things happen to all of us do not let the devil have a foothold. Meaning, do not let Satan take hold of your emotions and twist your thoughts to the point where you forget to check in with God. Don't let the devil persuade you to take matters into your own hands, the Bible says that vengeance belongs to God (see Romans 12:19).

When we are going through heartbreak and offenses, that is when we need to run to sprint to the feet of Jesus, if we don't that gives way for sin to creep in. We don't want that. We want to continue pursuing holiness and righteousness. We can be angry and not sin against God by simply bringing our pain to Him in the first place. Don't be like Cain (Genesis 4), when God presents the opportunity to come to Him, YOU BETTER GO!

Be quick to give your burdens to Jesus!

Let's Pray

Father God, thank you for my brother or sister reading this message. Thank You that You open Yourself up for us to run to You when life gets dark. Thank You that Your love is a consuming fire and that You wipe away all our tears. Please forgive us God when we hold on to offenses. We know it hardens our hearts and we need Your help to soften them again. Please help us Abba. We cannot heal without You. We cannot see the light of life without You, so will You please help us to run to You? We don't want to hold on to anything that could cause us to sin against You. So, Abba please make us more aware of Your presence in our lives, and quiet us when our thoughts and emotions are loud. Help us to wait patiently for Your still small voice, and help us to run to You instead of the world. We love You Jesus, and we give you this pain because You care for us. Thank You again for Your life-changing love.

In Jesus name,

Amen

Link to The Tree, click the section that says community: www.thehoneyscoop.com