Believing God Is Good Even When Your Circumstances Aren’t

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“You just don’t understand what it’s like to be me!” my tween yelled as he ran upstairs to his room. I sighed as I heard the door slam. We had clashed continually as of late over his choice of friends and the activities he wanted to do while with said friends. He wanted to push past the boundaries I had set and follow what his peers were doing. While the rules I had given him were designed to protect him, he viewed these guidelines as unfair and restrictive.

His outburst reminded me of my own recent conversations with God. I didn’t agree with the way He had handled the circumstances I had been walking through. It felt, at times, like He didn’t care or hadn’t answered prayers in the way that I would have liked. I didn’t understand why He had allowed what He had or why He hadn’t intervened in the way that I thought He should.

Perhaps you can relate. When walking through hardships and difficulties, we might face the temptation to stray from God’s path. We might look at other people who don’t care about making the right choices and envy their carefree attitude. Like my child, we might not see the benefit of doing what is right when it looks like others are having more fun. We might ask, “Why try so hard to follow God and keep our life from sin? Does it even matter?” We might view God’s instructions to us as oppressive and restrictive rather than freeing.

However, Proverbs 1:33 reminds us of the benefits of following God, saying: “But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.” What can we learn from this passage?

1. Sin isn’t as fun as it looks.

It might seem obvious to state, but the truth is that sin is often presented to us in a deceptive package. Some choices are so destructive and harmful that we would never choose them. But other choices look attractive to us. Sin can be alluring. As Louie Giglio points out in Don’t Give the Enemy a Seat at the Table, if we’re feeling lonely or overlooked, an adulterous affair, unhealthy friendship, or destructive pattern of behavior can offer us comfort.

Satan is wily in the way he deceives us. As Giglio emphasizes, he dangles a temptation in front of us like a sparkly bait on a fish hook. He makes a sinful choice or walking away from God look attractive and innocent. It might promise us relief in the short-term, but in the long-term, actions that don’t line up with God’s Word or go against what God has told us will only end in consequences.

2. When we follow God’s precepts, we live in a place of security.

On the other hand, as the passage stresses, when we listen to God, we will live “in safety and ease, without fear of harm.” When we read this, we may think that the passage is telling us that we won’t experience problems when we follow God. However, that is not what this verse is telling us. In fact, Jesus told His disciples, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Obviously, Jesus never promised us a life free of trouble or pain.

However, what the verse says is that we will have a refuge and a place of security in Jesus when we follow Him. That though devastating events may happen, and we will walk through hardships that might include health challenges, the deaths of loved ones, financial setbacks, and conflicts in relationships, we have a place of security and refuge we can turn to — a solid rock that keeps us grounded — even when life is tougher than we could have ever imagined.

We Should Always Listen to God

In a sermon series a few months ago, my pastor referenced Matthew 7:27 and talked about the storms of life happening to both the good and the bad — but how the righteous would always persist. Like he stressed, when we trust and rely on God, we can say even after great hardship, “This may have happened, but I am still here.”

Listening to God isn’t always easy. It can be inconvenient. It can cost us friends. Our belief in God can lead to mockery from others. Christianity is costly and it requires us to live differently and deny ourselves the sinful desires that others openly indulge in around us.

Like Asaph in Psalm 73, we might look at the casual attitudes of those who live in sin and think that the wicked have no worries or problems. It might look like they experience no consequences because of their sin, but God’s Word assures us that consequences will come at some point.

The Bible tells us that sin is serious (Romans 6:23). For those who do not put their faith in Jesus, their sinful choices will result in eternal separation from God. And for believers, we do not lose our salvation when we sin, but sin brings harm to us. Our sin causes separation in our relationship with God. If we do not confess our sin and persist in harmful choices, we will feel a spiritual distance and unrest in our souls. We will walk around with unresolved shame and guilt that God never intended for us to carry.

So what if we are a Christian and have walked into poor choices? The good news of the Gospel is that we can repent and turn. We don’t have to hide or feel ashamed. We can turn to God, confess, and ask for His help to get on track. And if we’ve never accepted Jesus, we can ask Him into our lives and make Him our Savior so that we, too, can be washed of sin and have a place of rest and refuge.

And for others of us that are weary — we’re feeling like our good choices and decision to listen to God haven’t paid off, we can be encouraged and keep pressing on. Though we might have hardship and turmoil, we have the peace and blessing of God. We have an unshakeable tower that we can cling to that will never crumble or give way no matter what comes against it.

Podcast:

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Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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How God Strengthens Us in Our Journey

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Chicken Soup for the Soul has sold more than 100 million books in the United States and Canada and has been translated into more than 40 languages. After the first book was published 23 years ago, it was so successful that more were written. And now, there are over 250 titles in what has become a Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

The book was developed by motivational speakers Jack Canfield and Mark Victor, who used inspirational stories in their talks. When people repeatedly asked if the stories were written down somewhere, Canfield and Victor decided to compile their best 101 stories in a book. And they called it Chicken Soup for the Soul. Their hope was that they could help others by sharing stories and providing comfort and encouragement, much like a bowl of hot soup on a rainy day.

While the stories of others can be inspirational and motivational, and we connect to others through stories and can be soothed by reading or hearing what others have gone through, our souls need to be fed by the Word of God and time spent with God. Just as our bodies need food and water, our souls need spiritual nourishment that can only be found in walking with God.

The Bible speaks of receiving our “daily bread” each day (Matthew 6:11). When tempted by Satan in the desert to turn stones into bread, Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God'” (Matthew 4:4). In other words, Jesus pointed to the reality that man needs spiritual nourishment and that our souls are designed to feed on the sustenance God provides.

We Find Nourishment in the Way God Leads

Isaiah 49:9 says this: “[I will say] to the captives, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!’ They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill” (emphasis mine).

Earlier in Isaiah 49, the Messiah (Jesus) is the speaker and is addressing the nations. He tells of His purpose in restoring Israel to Himself and being a light to the Gentiles. Here in this section of the passage, the verses speak further of His purpose in bringing captives out of their slavery to sin and into freedom in walking with Him. Certainly, these verses can speak of unbelievers becoming saved but also can be representative of our Christian journey when we have put our faith and trust in Jesus and follow where He leads.

However, this verse also speaks of the Israelites in captivity to Babylon and talks about how they will be led by a Savior back to their home in Israel. (Side note: Obviously, at this point in history, Jesus had not physically come to earth yet as the Messiah, but was still very much present in the story of the Old Testament.)

If we look at the history of Israel, the Israelites were taken from their homes and put into captivity in Babylon when they fell into idolatry and disobedience and broke the terms of their covenant with God. God allowed them to suffer the ruin of Jerusalem and their temple and be taken from their homes, but then, in his loving-kindness, after a time period of 70 years, He allowed them to return back to their homes.

We can further observe two things:

1. God strengthens us along the way.

The passage tells us that “they will feed beside the roads.” Here, the passage gives us a picture of the captives being led home. Like sheep following a loving shepherd, they were given nourishment and taken care of when they went the way that God led. In a similar way, we will receive nourishment when we walk the path God has for us. In some translations, it reads, “They shall feed in the ways” (emphasis mine).

We can’t miss that the food showed up alongside the roads. It wasn’t given beforehand. They were actually underway on the journey when they encountered the needed sustenance. As Alexander MacLaren points out, they were fed as they went. While we may hesitate to follow Jesus when His way looks hard and we don’t like what He tells us to do, we can be assured that we will be refreshed and strengthened when we make time to listen to His voice and follow Him. Though another way may look easier and more comfortable initially, if it’s not God’s way, it will lead to spiritual stagnancy and spiritual starvation.

Also, along those lines, as MacLaren also explains, the ways will feed us. Those things we do in obedience to Him will be those that give us strength:

If you wish to weaken the influence of any principle upon you, do not work it out, and it will wither and die. If a man would grasp the fulness of spiritual sustenance which lies in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, let him go to work on the basis of the Gospel, and he ‘shall feed in the ways,’ and common duties will minister strength to him instead of taking strength from him. We can make the smallest daily incidents subserve our growth and our spiritual strength, because, if we thus do them, they will bring to us attestations of the reality of the faith by which we act on them.

2. We will find nourishment even in difficult places.

Secondly, not only will we feed beside the roads, we will find pasture on every barren hill” (emphasis mine). We can easily miss this if we don’t look at the words closely, but there is a contrast between the pasture and the barrenness of the hills in which they walk. In this particular terrain, the pastures in which the flocks fed were down in the valleys, or low parts, and not in the high parts. No grass or landscape grew on top of the hills or mountains.

What we can take away is not only will we be fed in the ways God leads, even when God leads us to a place that appears bare, like the hills in this verse, He will also provide for us in those places and keep us sustained. Though we all want our walks with Jesus to lead us to places that are trouble-free, that isn’t the reality of what will happen as Christians. In many ways, our lives may get more difficult when we become Christians because we will encounter more stress and trouble when we attempt to live out the counter-cultural mandates of the Bible. In addition, we live in a fallen world where we have sadness, sickness, and many trials.

Yet, even in those places of trouble and hardship, though God won’t necessarily take those trials away, God provides us strength and encouragement. He may lead us to barren places where we are in great pain, but in those places of pain, we will have the help of God. Though we may struggle every day to get out of bed, when we turn to God, we have a place where we can take our anxiety, depression, guilt, sadness, anger, frustration, or whatever bothers us. Scripture tells us that God is close to the broken-hearted and crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18Psalm 147:3).

It is better to walk with Him in those hard places than look for the comfortable path where we may have all we think we want but lack what we need in our souls.

Drawing the Sustenance God Offers

Through our everyday trials, God is with us. He nourishes our souls in a way that only He can. And yet, we have to reach out and grab hold of the nourishment He offers. As MacLaren points out, “It is only an active Christian life that is a nourished and growing Christian life.”

We have to intentionally draw close to God each day and read from His Word and also obey His precepts. When we walk after Him and complete the tasks that He asks of us, He offers refreshment, strength, and instruction to us in the process. We grow spiritually dry and stagnant when we neglect to carve out time for Him and His Word and ignore His voice or don’t attempt to hear His direction for us at all.

And what if we are far away at the moment? We can turn to Him and ask Him to help us get back on the right path. We can’t miss that the Israelites led were former captives — captives because of their sin and rebellion. And yet, God freed them from captivity.

Just as the Jews are depicted in this passage as sheep led by a shepherd, we, as Christians, are also depicted as sheep elsewhere in the Bible (Psalm 100:3Luke 15:4-7John 10:11). When we allow God to lead us, He takes us to places where there is an abundance of “food” for our souls. This truth can give us hope no matter what place we walk through — whether fertile valleys or barren heights.

Related Bible Verses:

Psalm 42:1: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.”

Philippians 4:19: “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”

Related Resources:

This article is the second in the series “Finding Hope in the Midst of Disappointing Circumstances.” Check out the other articles in the series: “Work That Truly Matters”“How God Helps Us Overcome Obstacles,” and “A God Who Loves Us.” These are all focused on helping us find meaning and purpose when we are disappointed in the place God has led us.

Podcast Notes and Corrections:

For more study on Isaiah 49, Biblegateway.com and Biblehub.com provide some great free commentaries. I referenced Alexander MacLaren’s, in particular.

In reference to Canfield and Victor, founders of Chicken Soup for the Soul, they used the inspirational stories of others in their talks — not their stories.

*Updated and adapted from post published February 9, 2019.

 

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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If You’re Struggling to Feel God’s Love

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I usually don’t do New Year’s resolutions. However, at this time of year, I see the value in reflecting on the past year and meditating on ways to do things differently in the new year or improve things that aren’t working (even if it doesn’t involve a list).

Just like some of you who may be reading this, I have got some areas of my life that haven’t been working so well for me lately. And thus, when I listened to a Christmas Eve sermon which centered on Revelation 12:11, I decided that I wanted my word of the year to be “overcome.” I know that there are some patterns of behavior that are holding me back.

Even as a blogger who writes about healing and spiritual growth, I am ever in process myself. And just from undergoing some healing these past few years, I know that I don’t have the strength to overcome these areas on my own. And so, I have been praying about these areas and asking God to help me.

Why We Don’t Always Feel Like God Loves Us

One such area I have been in need of an intervention in is in the area of God’s love. I know. I have written numerous blog posts on the subject. However, it’s been an area I’ve struggled with at different intervals of my life because of past events that like to surface, difficult circumstances that make it challenging to trace God’s hand, and lies of the enemy that try to tempt me once again as they have in the past. I’ll just be honest with you: I don’t feel God’s love in a tangible way all of the time even though I can point to ways He has rescued me in my life, comforted me, and come through for me.

Recently, I prayed, God, help me to feel your love. Why don’t I always feel it? I then went about my day and forgot I had even asked. On a whim, not even remembering that I had asked this question, I went by the bookshelf and picked up Breaking Free by Beth Moore. These were the words I read on the page I opened:

I continue to see this statement in my mail: ‘I have such trouble really believing and accepting how much God loves me.’ So I began to ask God, ‘Lord, why do we have so much trouble believing and accepting Your love for us?’ I offered God multiple-choice answers to my own question: ‘Is it our backgrounds? Our childhood hurts? The unsound teachings we’ve received? The unloving people who surround us?’ I would have gone on and on except that He seemed to interrupt me — and He had the gall not to choose one of my multiple-choice answers.

As clearly as a bell, God spoke to my heart through His Spirit and said, ‘The answer to your question is the sin of unbelief.’ The thought never crossed my mind. Since then, it’s never left my mind.

After reading these words, I almost fell over in shock. I received this book from a friend about five years ago. I read it then, but I had no recollection of the words that lay before me. In addition, I wasn’t searching out this section of the book or expecting there to be an answer for me within its pages. If anything, the fact that He answered me so readily testified to me of God’s care and love right then.

You see, I had been waiting to feel God’s love, and I do feel it at times. But Moore stresses rightly that His love is something we have to believe, not always just wait to feel. The Bible tells us this: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Most of us would have to think twice about dying for someone we love, let alone someone who didn’t even appreciate the gift. Jesus died knowing that some of us would be flippant about His act while others of us would reject His offer.

In addition, if that weren’t enough, Jesus didn’t come to earth by being born to a royal family in a palace. He downgraded from the splendor of heaven to dwell with us here. He demanded none of the prestige that was due Him — to offer a way out of the mess that we created.

And if you need one more example of His great love, we need only think back to the creation story where God made us as the climax of His creation. We weren’t an afterthought or on the same level as the animals and plants. He set us above them — to rule over them. We were made in the likeness of God; as one commentator put it, we were made to be God’s “shadow.” He saw fit to give us His own attributes and make us in His own image.

To Feel God’s Love, We Have to First Believe It

Many of us feel it’s impossible that God would love us because of how others have treated us or because we have have even rejected ourselves, but the painful truth is that when we don’t accept that God loves us, we are participating in unbelief. As Moore argues later in the chapter:

Unbelief regarding the love of God is the ultimate slap in His face. The world came into being from the foundation of God’s love. God nailed down His love for us on the cross. Can you imagine the grief of our unbelief after all He’s done?

On a much smaller scale, it might be like us presenting our child with a lavish gift and a position to work for us and them saying to us, I will take the gift and the position, but I still don’t feel like it’s mine. We would want to hit them over the head and say, Wake up! Aren’t you enjoying the benefits of this gift even as we speak and yet you deny it’s yours?

A stronghold is something we lift up and attach ourselves to — a thought pattern or belief — that opposes God’s Word. Unbelief of God’s love can become a stronghold. To demolish the stronghold of unbelief of God’s love, we need to tear down the lies that He doesn’t love us or that we are unlovable and replace those with belief in God’s truth declared in His Word.

What the Bible Tells Us About God’s Love

In a project I have been working on lately, this idea has continually popped up in the Bible stories I have been studying: the path of belief versus unbelief that God offers. Often, God surprises me with His answers. They don’t always seem that logical. Rather than 2 + 2 = 4, the answer is instead 23 or squirrel or the color blue. I wouldn’t think that belief is the key to feeling God’s love.

Eve, when tempted by Satan in the Garden of Eden to eat the fruit, did so because she entered into disbelief. She stepped away from believing God had her best in mind (when He warned her not to eat the fruit) and believed that God was holding out on her by placing a restriction on that fruit, even though God had done everything to prove otherwise by placing her in a perfect garden with all of her needs met. It didn’t matter what she felt at the moment. The truth, whether she believed it or not, was that God did love her and had forbidden her from eating the fruit because He was protecting her. The truth remained even when she stepped out of belief and aligned herself with Satan and got out of alignment with God.

The Bible tells us that we are dearly loved by God (Eph. 5:1,2Col. 3:12). Dearly loved means that we can be rooted in a deep, unwavering belief of God’s love that permeates our every action. Ultimately, all of us need a conviction of God’s love to operate in His power and will because otherwise we will fall into unbelief on the days we don’t feel like His love is there.

How about you? Do you struggle to feel God’s love? Share with us in the comments!

Related Resources:

Never entered in a relationship with Jesus Christ and want to learn more about salvation? Check out this Know God page for a summary of how to enter into a relationship with Jesus.

*Updated and adapted from a post published January 15, 2017.

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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Finding Rest When Life Gets Busy

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Earlier this week, a big Amazon package was sitting on my kitchen table when I got home. I knew exactly what it was. It was a brand new food processor I had just ordered a few days before. My plan was to start making all my own baby food, since my son was almost eight months old, and I was behind in giving him “other foods” (aka anything other than formula).

I decided that making homemade baby food would be a good idea in order to save money, and that I would be an accomplished, above-average mom. As I went to a kitchen drawer for scissors to open the package, I felt like I was supposed to be excited about it, but I wasn’t. I knew I wouldn’t be able to successfully do this. I knew I didn’t have all the time, energy, and drive in me in order to make this homemade baby food thing happen. I was defeated before I had even begun. I felt like a failure.

As I sat down for my quiet time this morning, my heart was heavy. My many perceived failures were piling up on me. I had a picture in my mind of the kind of woman, wife, and mom I was supposed to be.

I was supposed to have a perfectly clean house, a schedule of all of our meals for the next month, and all of our doctors’ appointments lined up for the year. I was supposed to be teacher-of-the-year at my school, go to the gym three times a week, and be up-to-date on all the latest fashions. I was supposed to volunteer in the community, serve in many facets at my church, and even be a leader of a handful of ministries. I was supposed to be an incredibly responsible, respectable, and put-together adult. I was supposed to have an organized purse and be able to create made-from-scratch baby foods.

The list was long and my strength was weak. Why couldn’t I be and do all of those things? Why didn’t God put the ability to accomplish these tasks more readily inside of me? I mean, a woman able to do it all is what would please Him and mean success, right?

With all of my weaknesses glaring, I cried out to God and realized something. I had been pressuring myself to be someone that I may never be. And that is OK. Even better than that, it’s very possible that I had been wasting time and energy trying to be someone that I was never supposed to be.

You see, as I got caught up in such a long list of to do’s, it was almost as if I was focused on being more like Martha instead of more like Mary. Let’s take a look at the passage to remind ourselves of these two sisters.

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.’ ” (Luke 10:38-42 –ESV)

Martha was focused on many things. She was distracted by them and trying to do, do, do for Jesus. Maybe, in a way, she was trying to be good enough for him. This is the trap that I have found myself in. I long to be a daughter that God is pleased with, and while that is a great thing, I had created all these things in my mind that He must expect from me. Things I thought I must do in order to be worthy of his presence. Like Martha, I was focusing on my to-do list rather than simply enjoying the company of the One in my heart.

There are a couple problems with this works-based mentality. The first is that my works will never make me good enough for him. Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV) says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

The second problem with me trying to do more for Jesus is that it takes me away from the real truth and beauty of Christianity — to be in a close and personal relationship with God because of what Christ did for me, not what I do for Him. To simply be in awe of who He is and to rest in and enjoy His presence, hear His teaching, and get to know Him more. And the funny thing is, time spent with Him is where I get the strength to do the things that He has called me to.

The world teaches us to accomplish as much as we possibly can and to earn our worth and acceptance. To be more like Martha. To work hard, and then we might be “good enough.” But that’s not what Jesus tells us to do. Jesus says for us to pause from our busyness and learn from Him. To believe that “in repentance and rest is our salvation” (Isaiah 30:15).

Yes, God has planned things for me to do, and I certainly want to do them. I want to glorify Him with my life, and I don’t want to miss what He has for me. But my hope is that I don’t get caught up in works. That I would not “be anxious and troubled about many things.” That I would be more like Mary and sit at the feet of Jesus.

Because resting in His presence will then allow me to clearly see the difference between the works He has called me to and the ones He hasn’t.

What about you? Have you become so caught up in trying to please others or meet your own impossible expectations that you haven’t been able to listen to Jesus lately? What is one way you can make time for Him today?

*Updated and adapted from a post originally published July 17, 2015.

Rachel Howard

Rachel Howard

With a degree in music education, Rachel Howard is a middle grades chorus instructor who has a passion for teaching students about her love for music. In addition to inspiring adolescents in the public school system, Rachel is currently taking piano lessons and also enjoys photography, scrapbooking and Francine Rivers novels. A small-group leader at her church, Rachel also leads worship on occasion. In addition to these roles, Rachel is a wife and mom to two kids, Isaac and Evelyn. Rachel currently resides in Georgia with her husband and kids.

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Can I Really Trust God in My Difficult Circumstance?

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As believers, there are certain truths that we can all agree on: God is good. He is for us. He made us for a special purpose. He loves us. These are foundational ideas of our faith, but certain circumstances can throw us for a loop to the point that we have difficulty hanging onto these ideas as tightly as we once did — or at all.

When we’re caught up in an unexpected circumstance — the unraveling of a significant relationship, a long-term health battle, the loss of a job or financial stability, the death of a close friend or family member, or other stressful circumstance —  we can sometimes react in ways that we wouldn’t have guessed we would.

In particular, our zeal for the Lord might run low after months of waiting for His intervention in a situation, or our overall faith in His goodness might be challenged when we encounter obstacle after obstacle in following Him. However, in those times, rather than rely on feelings that will lead us astray, we can turn to the immovable bedrock of Scripture to comfort and calm our runaway thoughts: “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it abundantly” (John 10:10, NKJV).

Two takeaways to remember as we navigate seasons that shake our faith and belief in the goodness of God:

1. There is no abundant life outside of Jesus.

When experiencing intense pain, we want to find immediate comfort and escape. Satan will try to lie to us and tell us that the abundant life that Jesus talks about hasn’t been so abundant in Him, so we should try to find this life of abundance in other ways. However, the passage is clear that behaviors and decisions we make to try to experience the life we find in Christ outside of Him won’t work in the long run.

We can build successful businesses, pursue relationships, and complete a myriad of accomplishments, but if it’s not God’s will for us, we won’t be fulfilled doing it. It tells us in the passage that the thief comes to steal and destroy. Living for any other purpose or distracting ourselves with other pursuits doesn’t provide us peace and joy — only in Christ do we find peace and joy.

I’ll be honest, I know how to hear clearly from God. I hear from Him when I spend time in prayer and His Word, fellowship with other believers, and listen intently for His messages to me in sermons and the studies I do with my Bible study group. But I know how to turn down the volume. Sleep in during my quiet time. Gloss over Bible study. Disconnect from other believers. But when I am not as connected to Him, I don’t experience real peace.

In my current season, I’ve let some distractions creep in, some things that I just don’t feel that good about doing. It satisfies for a minute, but I am left wishing I had never let myself go down that path. It doesn’t satisfy me long-term. What this passage is saying is that nothing quenches our soul thirst like Christ.

When thirsty, we might reach for a soda or juice, perhaps. But while these beverages might take the edge off our thirst initially, they don’t take our thirst away. They don’t refresh like water. Water is the only thing that takes our thirst away completely. Similarly, the abundant life can only be found in Christ — no distraction or habit can quench our thirst like Jesus, our living water (John 4:13, 14).

2. The Good Shepherd brings us good.

Elsewhere in the passage, Jesus identifies Himself as the “good Shepherd.”  In John 10:14, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me — just as the Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep.” Jesus always looks out for His sheep and leads them in the way that is best for them. That He can be trusted.

I think we can read those verses when we haven’t really experienced a devastating trial and we can say, “OK, that’s great. God leads me in all circumstances.” And we accept that. But when we’re in a place of trial and hardship then our trust in Him is truly challenged. His trustworthiness is harder to accept. Can we still trust Him to lead us even when we really don’t know the way — when we’re waking up wishing that we could have someone else’s experience?

Even in those places where we don’t want to be where we are and we can’t get out on our own, He is with us. If we look at Psalm 23, it tells that Jesus leads us not only in places that are pleasant, but He also leads us in dark valleys. Therefore, no matter what it feels like at the moment, those of us trusting and following after God can rest in the faithfulness and goodness of our God. He is faithful in how He leads us, and He is always good to us, even when it feels like He is not being that good to us.

Truth to Hold Onto When Life Devastates Us

Recently in watching the Olympics, I was so moved by Simone Biles’ struggle to fight against the pressure she felt in the competition. Named the “G.O.A.T,” or “Greatest of All Time” in gymnastics, she had much to live up to and prove as she competed in the Olympics for the second time. After a shaky qualifying performance, the pressure mounted when she competed in vault.

She sprinted toward the vault to perform like she had done hundreds — even thousands of times before — but instead of displaying her immense talent in a perfect series of tumbles in the air, she got the “twisties” instead. She lost her sense of where she was in the air, her eyes rolled back, and she fell through the rest of her tumble to land unsteadily on the mat below. I felt so sad for her as I watched. Even though I am not a gymnast, I could empathize with her experience of not being able to perform at her best because of overwhelming pressure and anxiety.

In the aftermath of her performance, I thought about the fact that we can go bravely through life doing the spins and tumbles that we’ve been taught to do, relying on the truths of the Gospel that help us ward off the lies of the enemy. We can do so well for a time, and then when devastating hardship comes, we get knocked sideways. We lose our sense of direction and balance. Doctrines that we once held onto so firmly don’t feel so firm any longer. Certain truths that felt so easy to believe feel impossible to believe any longer.

However, we can overcome our spiritual “twisties” the same way that gymnasts overcome theirs. As one article put it, gymnasts experience the twisties when they stop trusting their muscle memory. Stress or fear can get in the way of their training and make them less trusting. Therefore, they retrain themselves in basic skills and learn to trust again. And in a similar way, we can find our way out of what feels like a dark free fall by reminding ourselves of certain truths and refusing to let go of these truths (even when they are so clearly challenged) — truths like God is faithful and He knows what He is doing — when every shred of human logic in our being would tell us to do otherwise.

When we’re free falling, the pain may be so great that we just don’t care anymore, and we might have already tried to disengage God and engage in behaviors we know are wrong. But even if we have already started our exit plan to try and run from God and run to other things, we don’t have to keep running. We can turn right where we are and run to God and remind ourselves that He is a good Father and He can be trusted.

God knows why we are running and knows everything about our situation even before we tell Him. While we can only see the darkness that is all around us, the darkness is as light to Him. We can only find our way out of our dark valley by resting trustingly in His presence and holding fast to His truth even when the truths don’t appear to be working in our circumstances.

The bottom line: If we let them, circumstances can wreck our faith. Holding onto the truths that God is the good Shepherd and will lead us out is that which can sustain us when darkness surrounds us.

*Updated January 15, 2022.

Podcast Notes & Corrections:

Check out the movie Greater mentioned in the podcast. Greater tells the story of Brandon Burlsworth, an average kid with a more-than-average dream to play Division 1 football. Through the course of the film, his family learns to keep trusting God even when life is confusing and they don’t always understand.

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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4 Truths to Consider When God Closes a Door

when god closes a door

Several years ago, after a miscarriage and surgery, I went home and immediately felt something wasn’t right in my body. I called up the nurse, and she rationalized that I was most likely experiencing side effects from the drugs administered in the emergency room. But I still felt really funny.

My heart raced uncontrollably even when I was lying down. I felt so out of breath, foggy — I couldn’t think clearly, and my heartbeat pulsated in a painful way right at the top of my skull.

A few days later, I tried to make an effort to go out for my birthday — just pizza and shopping at a local outlet mall. “Something is wrong with me,” I told my husband as I struggled to walk the distance of the parking lot. I just didn’t feel good. My body felt so sluggish, my mind in a fuzzy cloud.

A doctor’s visit the next week revealed the problem: my hemoglobin levels had dropped very low, and my heart was working overtime to circulate oxygen. I couldn’t get out of bed without feeling like I would collapse. My doctor’s office offered to set up a blood transfusion, but when I discussed it with my husband, we decided we didn’t like all the risks.

We made the difficult decision for me to let my body heal itself in a slow process over the next few months. I rested at home for several weeks, and when I did finally get enough strength to go back to church, I was devastated. My first Sunday back corresponded with the release date of our church worship team’s first single.

My dream had always been to sing and write music. But I had walked away from the worship team a year before that to enroll in a Hope ministry training when God had asked me to give up music for a season. Not only that, another opportunity had already shattered and fallen at my feet.

I had been asked to volunteer to serve on a leadership team for a brand new women’s ministry for young moms. Comprised of many of my close friends, the team was a perfect fit for me. Or so I thought. I had been praying for a long time that God would open a door for me into ministry.

However, the women’s event was scheduled just a few weeks after my surgery. I kept praying and hoping God would let me get well enough to help. But that didn’t happen. I was too sick. I couldn’t stay on my feet for long periods of time, much less go anywhere without the support of my husband’s arm. The avenue that I thought God was opening for me wasn’t really an avenue at all. My health made it impossible for me to take part in the event.

As I left church early that first Sunday back, mostly to avoid sympathetic friends and suffocating stares, I drove home and went straight up to my room, fell on my bed, and cried.

I picked up the book I had been reading on my bedside table, Love, Skip, Jump: The Adventure of Yes by Shelene Bryan, and I happened to turn to a chapter in which Bryan describes the rejection of a pitch for a new show she had worked so hard to present to several prominent television networks. She relates: “I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t help but ask God, ‘Lord what was that all about? Why did You have me walk into all those networks and pitch this idea that you placed on my heart if it was going to be a Big Fat No?’ ”

I didn’t like the passage I was reading. I wanted Bryan to provide me the answer I wanted to hear, that I was going to be well and all of the hopes I had were going to come to pass. But as if to further pound the truth that God was moving me into the background for a season, I opened my Facebook to these words by Nikki Koziarz: “Sometimes we look to follow someone else’s path toward our calling. But maybe today God is saying, ‘Don’t follow them, follow me.’ His way is unique and unstoppable” (Psalms 32:8).

To be honest, I was angry. What kind of a God would let me lose a baby, miss out on important ministry opportunities, and stand on the outside while others lived out what I wanted to do?

However, as much as I could feel stuff breaking inside me as I experienced the pain of watching others get to joyfully participate in that which I wanted to be a part of, I felt some truths resonate in my heart:

1.  I don’t have the right to do anything but the will of the Father.

Jesus often said that He only came to do the will of the One who sent Him. This meant that He was selective in the choices and decisions He made. He didn’t jump into every opportunity that came His way, and He didn’t make decisions to please Himself or achieve His own selfish goals. He even asked on occasion for there to be a different way when He knew the path would be difficult, as when He prayed for the “cup to pass from Him” in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:42).

2.  What I give up, He may give back to me.

There have been times that I have passed up on a chance when I felt a “no” in my spirit only to find that God gives me the very thing I wanted at a later time — in a way beyond what I could have imagined or planned. Even though Bryan had to give up her dream of her reality show idea, she realized after some prayer that God was asking her to still implement her village makeover idea without the cameras. He gave her a “yes” in a way that was different than she anticipated, and she would have missed it if she continued to plow ahead with her reality show vision.

3.  All promotion comes from the Lord.

So many times, I am trapped into thinking that the doors are closed in my face because I am not liked by certain individuals, but God has continually shown me that promotion comes from Him (Psalm 75:6). If He truly wants me in a place of ministry, He will place me there in His timing, and He will show me the path He has for me to get there.

4.  When I’m stuck, I should do what’s in front of me.

By looking only ahead at my goal, I may miss the obvious opportunity or step I am to take right in front of me. As Bryan concludes in her chapter: “Sometimes I can get so excited to do something that I’ll bust down a wall in the name of Jesus. Then God kindly points out the door that He already placed for me to walk through. Oops.”

If you’re anything like me, I can get so overwhelmed looking at how far away I am from my desired destination that I start to panic and forget what I can be doing in the moment. I can miss the assignment that Jesus has put in my lap for today in my anxious desire to get to tomorrow. As Sarah Young says in her Jesus Calling devotion:

When things seem to be going all wrong, stop and affirm your trust in Me. Calmly bring these matters to Me, and leave them in My capable hands. Then, simply do the next thing. Stay in touch with Me through thankful, trusting prayers, resting in My sovereign control. Rejoice in Me — exult in the God of your salvation! As you trust in Me, I make your feel like the feet of a deer, I enable you to walk and make progress upon your places of trouble, suffering, or responsibility. Be blessed and keep trusting!”

Young encourages me that when the promise hasn’t come true, when I am not in the place I want to be, I need to do the task that is in front of me right now. It may have nothing to do with my calling or may not even be what I feel is the future God has for me, but it is what God is calling me to in this moment.

And the other truth I know is this: Deep inside of me a little voice whispers that some of His promises, particularly about music, haven’t come true yet because I’m not finished. He wants me working on something I would rather not work on — a different project that I’ve left undone. I’ve skipped some steps, pushed off some things for another day. And I need to complete God’s assignment in order to obtain His blessings.

Consider George Matheson’s prayer from Streams in the Desert:

Dear Holy Spirit, my desire is to be led by You. Nevertheless, my opportunities for usefulness seem to be disappointed, for today the door appears open in to a life of service for You but tomorrow it closes before me just as I am about to enter. Teach me to see another door even in the midst of the inaction of this time. Help me to find, even in the area of service where You have closed a door, a new entrance into Your service. Inspire me with the knowledge that a person may sometimes be called to serve by doing nothing, by staying still, or by waiting. And when I remember the power of Your ‘gentle whisper’ (1 Kings 19:12), I will not complain that sometimes the Spirit allows me not to go.”

Related Bible Verses:

Psalm 32:8: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.”

Luke 22:42: ” ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’ ”

1 Kings 19:12: “After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.”

*Updated and adapted from a post published January 23, 2015. Updated January 15, 2022.

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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Finding Strength to Continue on in Life’s Darkest Valleys

railroad

A manager once told me I was great “out-of-the-gate” at the beginning of my shift but less enthusiastic as my shift wore on.

I had to admit the truthfulness of his words. As a coffee barista, I had to start early morning shifts that required me to roll out of bed around 4:30 a.m. Once I got through the first few hours of my morning shift, including the early morning rush of coffee-drinkers, I couldn’t wait to go home and take a nap. My eyelids and limbs felt heavy. The minutes ticked by so slowly. My manager observed me wind down energy-wise as my shift wore on.

Spiritually, I tend to operate in the same way. I am really good “out-of-the-gate.” I start an assignment God gives me with energy and enthusiasm. I have a lot of good ideas. I tell everyone around me what I am doing. As time goes on, though, I tend to get worn out, discouraged by trials and the opposition of others. I get frustrated and want to quit when the journey takes much longer than I expected and the hardships pile up. Maybe you can relate?

The Bible offers us guidance for those places where hardships have worn us down, and we can’t find the strength and endurance to continue on in the assignment God has given us. We can look to the example of Jesus to help us know what it looks like to keep going when our road is hard and long.

In Matthew 27:46, 50, Jesus had been hanging on the cross for several hours. During that time, he endured physical pain, thirst, and the sneers of onlookers below Him. Prior to that, he endured an unfair trial, a beating, and the humiliation of being nailed to the cross. In this moment, He was exhausted and in physical and mental agony. He said very little while on the cross, but when He spoke, His words revealed much:

About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’). … And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

In looking at Jesus’ words and actions in His last moments on the cross, what can we observe about enduring difficult circumstances?

1. He held onto God, though it appeared God was letting go of Him.

We see in Jesus’ words, “My God, my God” (emphasis mine), the words of a man who obviously still trusted in God enough to hold onto Him even when He felt abandoned to a terrible fate. Jesus wasn’t merely left behind or forgotten at the cross. God deliberately led Him there. Jesus knew what was coming. He knew what He would have to do and why He had to do it.

Yet, even though He understood the reasons for why He had to go the cross, the human side of Him struggled with the agony of the moment. Even in the struggle, though, He did not let go of God. I love what one commentary I read suggested about His words. The word “lema” can be translated to mean “to what — to whom — to what kind or sort — to what purpose or profit.” Therefore, we might understand “Why have you abandoned me?” to mean something more along the lines of “To what have you abandoned me to?”

Those of us walking through fierce flames most likely might have asked this very question of God. We might wonder how or why God would allow what He has allowed. We might question or feel a sense of betrayal that God is leaving us to “fend for ourselves” against great odds and those that would harm us. It feels impossible in those moments to hold on tenaciously when we question why God would permit us to experience the terrible circumstances we are in. And yet, Jesus shows us what it means to hold on to God even when our flesh demands answers of God and rebels against the places He brings us to when we walk in obedience to Him.

2. He didn’t save Himself, though He could have.

The second takeaway we have here is that Jesus exhibited incredible self-control in the middle of this agonizing experience on the cross. Can you imagine creating the entire world and all the people in it and not saying a word when they put you on trial for crimes you didn’t even commit? How about when they crucified you on a cross? When He was hanging on the cross, people walked by and shouted at him to save himself and prove he was God. He could have come down from the cross, but He didn’t. As Chuck Smith says, “It was only by not saving Himself that He was able to save you.” Similarly, in our own trial, we oftentimes have the choice whether or not we will save ourselves from the agony we are in.

We can just stop serving God and give in to what others want us to do. We can compromise. We can just act like the world and agree with the world and find acceptance. Or, we can take the example of Jesus and remain in the fire knowing that His will has taken us there. By remaining, we will positively impact the lives of those around us and bring others to salvation. Jesus is the only One who could take the sins of the world. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Though Jesus is the only One who could take our sin, as Christ-followers, we have a cross we pick up in following Him. We experience a crucifixion of self daily in our lives when we follow Him. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” In other words, when we follow Christ, we allow Him to dictate our choices and no longer live to serve ourselves. Jesus shows us here that hanging on tenaciously means choosing not to get out of suffering or hardship that comes in doing God’s will.

3. Though He wrestled in His agony, He continued to do God’s work.

Right before Jesus died, the passage tells us that He gave out a loud cry and “gave up his spirit.” This last act of Jesus on the cross was significant because it shows us once again how Jesus never lost trust in His Father. He clung tenaciously on not only in His words but His last action — He “gave up” or surrendered His spirit to God. He never stopped doing the Father’s work because of the hardship He faced. He continued on until He breathed His last breath. Too often, we can lose our resolve in the process of following God, but God wants us to complete what He has given us to do.

I remember writing a few years ago a series on trials, and the main point in one of my posts was simply that we should continue on no matter what happens to us. I remember thinking when writing it that I would always push through in the work God had given me. I would never give up. And yet, I could never have imagined the types of trials that would come my way or how weak I would feel in the midst of those tribulations. I recognize myself in Peter who claimed he would never deny the Lord and did it the same night. And the question comes to me all the time when I am tired and worn out, waiting for me to answer: Will you still continue to follow me? Will you continue the work I asked you to complete still?

We most likely all believe we would stick through to the end, but we never could have anticipated how deep the betrayal would cut us, how tiring the chronic health problems, how humiliating the lack of success, how impossible the circumstances. And yet, even in those, we can hold fast to Jesus. Even in His final moments on earth, He provided an example for us, when He surrendered His spirit to God.

Remaining Strong in Our Trials

One last tidbit we can find in the passage is that Jesus called out “loudly” when he said “My God, My God” and gave a “loud cry” before He gave up His spirit. He wanted others to hear what He was saying. He could have muttered these words under His breath or kept His thoughts to Himself. I believe He said what He did loudly because He wanted us to note His inner thoughts and take courage in our own difficult valleys. Even in His worst moments, Jesus thought of us and left behind an example so that we would know what to do when our own journeys took unexpected twists and turns.

Friend, I don’t know where you are as you are reading this, but have you let the darkness of your circumstances overwhelm you? Are you loosening your once tight grip on Jesus? Not only do we have the example of Jesus to strengthen us, but we also have something else that is even better. We have Jesus’ very presence with us. When we are weak, we can call out to Jesus. We can ask Him for help in our struggle. We don’t have to turn away from Him.

We can accept that though the trial is fierce and we don’t understand, God is good and our trial will only last for a little while before God restores us once again (1 Peter 5:10).

*Updated January 15, 2022.

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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Why Isn’t God Blessing Me?

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My husband had a professor in college who responded to most, if not all, student questions with the same answer. If a student asked about grading requirements for an assignment, the professor would say, “Check the website.”  If a student asked about dates for tests, the professor would say, “Check the website.”

The professor’s frequent use of the phrase became somewhat of a joke in our home. If I inquired about something around the house or asked my husband a question, he would often look at me and say (in his best imitation of the professor’s voice), “Check the website.”

Although humorous, the professor’s intent in directing students to his course website every time someone asked a question was most likely that he wanted students to do what they needed to before they could expect action from him.

Spiritually, we can apply this same “check the website” principle when we feel like we aren’t receiving God’s blessings. Although God isn’t as gruff as my husband’s instructor and wants us to come to Him and ask when we don’t know the answer in a situation, there are times that we can examine our actions against God’s Word and discover that we aren’t reaping what we want in a particular area because of what we are sowing.

In his devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers explains how we should all “turn up” or check the “spiritual index.” According to Merriam-Webster.com, an “index” is a device (such as the pointer, called a “gnomon,” on a sundial) that gives a particular value or an indicator that leads us to a conclusion:

Never say it is not God’s will to give you what you ask, don’t sit down and faint, but find out the reason, turn up the index. Are you rightly related to your wife, to your husband, to your children, to your fellow-students … Have I been asking God to give me money for something I want when there is something I have not paid for? Have I been asking God for liberty while I am withholding it from someone who belongs to me? … If we turn up the index, we will see very clearly what is wrong — that friendship, that debt, that temper of mind.”

The Blessing of Reaping and Sowing  

Essentially, Chambers points out that many of us are asking for a blessing when there is a reason we can’t have it. Although Chambers focuses more on the idea of our prayers being hindered by certain attitudes in his devotion, we can also apply his idea of the “spiritual index” to the principle of reaping and sowing in the Bible.

Just like the sun causes a shadow to fall across a sundial when its rays hit the gnomon in order to tell the time, God causes our own examinations or “gnomons” to point to a particular problem in our lives when we subject ourselves to the light of His truth.

Obviously, there are times when we don’t receive blessings because it isn’t in God’s timing or He has delayed his response to work out our character or His answer is no.

However, I know I have been guilty of blaming God when I don’t get a certain outcome in a circumstance even when I haven’t exactly invested what I should to get the harvest at the proper time. As Galatians 6:7, 8 tells us: “God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. From the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.”

Although this passage is talking primarily about those who spend their money on worldly pleasures while neglecting to support the church, we can apply this to other areas of our lives. As commentator Albert Barnes notes, “Every kind of grain will produce grain like itself.” If we are acting in ways that are corrupt in our relationships or our finances, those choices will eventually come back to affect us.

I don’t know about you, but for much of my life, I worked mostly on my external behavior, making my outward actions look as good as possible for those around me while hiding some secrets. But I hadn’t realized that this is essentially “mocking God” (v. 7). I can’t just pretend to be a good person. Merely assuming outward forms of Christian behavior does not deceive God. We may get away with our sin-hiding for a time, but the Bible is very clear that God notices our true motives even if we fool everyone around us.

In essence, Galatians 6 reminds us that our actions do have an impact on our lives. While the lines cannot always be clearly drawn between our actions and the circumstances that come into our lives (sometimes bad things will happen even when we do what is right or vice versa), there is a correlation between our actions and spiritual blessings. Therefore, if we want a spiritual blessing in our lives or we know God has promised us one, and we’re not receiving it, we can check the “index” — and evaluate our deeds and what fruit they are producing in our lives.

God Blessed Me Financially When I Obeyed 

A perfect example of the principle of sowing and reaping at work in my life is when we were attempting to sell our townhouse and move into a bigger home. Our house was on the market for a year and a half, and we hadn’t had a single offer. I kept telling myself it wasn’t selling because of the location, the cramped floor plan, the plain master bathroom, or the lack of a basement. However, those were not the answers that gave me any peace; there was something else, and I knew it. What came to mind when I prayed about it was an unpaid sum of money I had promised to the church.

I had pledged a sum over a period of four years to help pay for a church remodeling project, and after making a few monthly payments, I had gotten lazy and stopped paying on the debt. A few years in, I still owed money to fulfill my commitment. When I received a check for some training I had completed for work and it was almost the exact amount I needed, I handed over the money to the remodeling fund and felt an instant sense of peace. One month later our “unsellable” house was under contract, and we were in the joyful process of looking for a new place to live.

Skeptics might look at this and say there was no connection between our house sale and the church payment — labeling what happened as a coincidence. However, I have seen the principle of the index at work enough times in my own life to know that when I fulfill a pledge, I prepare myself to receive a blessing. Chambers affirms this idea when he says, “It is no use praying unless we are living as children of God. Then, Jesus says — ‘Everyone that asketh, receiveth.’ ”

Checking the index, in this case, was not too painful; I had to give up some money I would rather have used on something else. However, there have been other times I have had to step out in faith when I felt tired and didn’t feel like doing what God asked. Or, I felt God’s nudge to let go of anger and make an apology in a relationship when I just wanted to stay mad or blame the other person. Many times, I have not wanted to obey, but when I live as God prescribes and take His Word seriously, I benefit from the blessings He promises.

To be clear, God isn’t a genie waiting to hand out gifts when we earn His good favor. We don’t merely do the things we should do to somehow earn something from God. In addition, index-checking is not a ritual we do to earn salvation. Our right standing with God comes when we put our faith and trust in Him (Romans 3:20-25).

However, God does want us to walk in faith and continually grow in righteousness after we are saved with the decisions we make. By reading His Word and spending time with Him in prayer, we can know those areas where God wants us to take an action or reminds us of an action He has already instructed us to take (Psalm 139:23, 24).

In my own experience, God has offered me more grace than I really deserve. A lot of times when I think I know of a problem in my spiritual life but am not sure, I’ll ask Him for confirmation, and He answers me. If we seek God intently, He will help us in the way to go. He will help us to know the areas we need to work on that are preventing us from receiving the blessing promised us.

I encourage you. Have you checked your index? What might Jesus be pointing out to you? If we already know of a directive God has given us, but we have gotten off track or grown weary in doing what He has asked, we can get back on track again. Many times, we want to obey God, but we let our own fears or doubts get the best of us.

However, we can push through whatever obstacles we have knowing that the work we do for God will not go unnoticed. As Ephesians 6:8 says, we will receive from the Lord the same good we do for others.

*Updated and adapted from post published May 29, 2015. Updated January 15, 2022.

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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Persevering to Receive God’s Promises

woman-1148942_1280“Call her back.”

I felt God’s nudge when I hung up the phone with the call center representative. After making an appointment, I had felt led to ask her if she needed prayer for anything. She gladly consented and shared her needs. I prayed with her on the phone and then hung up. I then heard God’s nudge to call her back.

I put my head in my lap and groaned in exhaustion. This woman hadn’t been the first one I had talked to that day. I had been on and off the phone for two and half hours, and she had been the fifth woman I had talked to. I had no idea I would be on the phone so long when I had called in the morning to make an appointment.

Yet, with each person I talked to I felt God’s nudge to witness, encourage, or pray for the person on the other line. Each time I got off the phone, I felt God’s whisper to keep calling. Therefore, I hadn’t planned to make appointments for my entire family, but I went ahead and scheduled appointments for the rest of my family that I had planned to do on a different day and listened to God’s voice with each new person that came on the line. I had had some breaks in between, but I hadn’t eaten lunch as of yet and needed to get my kids off the bus. When I felt His voice once more with the fifth person after a good portion of my day had been taken up already, I felt irritated. I was hungry, cranky, and tired. As an introvert, I found it anxiety-inducing talking to strangers on the phone just to make regular appointments — let alone have spiritual conversations with said strangers.

“Lord, why would you ask me to do this? Am I even hearing from you?” I voiced in disbelief. The verse “Not my will but yours be done” popped in my head, but I dismissed the words. Surely, God’s will for me on that day wasn’t to talk to the majority of the call center. I felt a resistance rising up in my heart. This had been a day in a series of days this week where God had asked more of me than I felt I had to give. While I often had God assignments in the course of my days that stretched me, the assignments that week had been much more relentless and time-consuming to the point that I questioned if I was even hearing from God.

Shortly after my pity-party, I read in the study I am going through how Lysa Terkeurst’s daughter felt led to fast and pray for a family all day long. Her mom — yes, Lysa, the Bible teacher — tried to talk her into only fasting a portion of the day, but she insisted. The all-day part got my attention when I read it. Yes, I knew God really wanted me to call the fifth woman back. So, after some grumbling, I picked up the phone once more the next day and called. I had to leave a message and missed her call. I called back once more and was told she would call me. I explained what I was doing to the woman on the line helping me and must have sounded insane, but perhaps she was the person that needed to hear the story.

Whatever the case, I finally felt a release when I just went ahead and did what God asked. However, I am still praying about some other assignments from that week because God brought me to my breaking point, and I felt that I left some unfinished steps. I wanted to do what He asked, but I didn’t realize that I had drawn up boundaries for Him. I had places that I didn’t want Him to go and lines that I didn’t want Him to cross. I didn’t even know I had those limits, but He showed me exactly where those were.

A Woman Who Perseveres Past Her Breaking Point

All of us have breaking points. Certain aggravating circumstances present themselves and we hit a wall and feel that we can go no further.

“I can’t!” we cry to the Lord. Yet, to get to our desired destinations requires that we push beyond our feelings of exhaustion, doubt, or discomfort in the moment.

In Ruth 1, Ruth and her sister-in-law, Orpah, faced an important crossroads. After their father-in-law and husbands died, they set out with their mother-in-law from Moab for Judah. However, after they travelled with Naomi some of the distance, Naomi urged them to go back.

The journey had been long and hard up to that point, and it had no promise of getting easier. If they continued with her, they would be traveling to an unknown place and would have to rely on the kindness of others. Notice the reaction of the daughters-in-law in Ruth 1:14-16:

Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. ‘Look,’ said Naomi, ‘your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.’ But Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.’

What can we learn from Orpah and Ruth’s different reactions when brought to their breaking points?

1. Getting to our promised land requires that we continually move forward, not back.

The point where Orpah parted from Naomi and Ruth was possibly at the Jordan River. To go forward meant to push into the land promised and given to God’s people, but to turn back at that point meant moving backwards into a land that stood as an obstacle between the Israelites and the Promised Land when the Israelites initially set out to possess the land. Orpah traveled some of the distance with Naomi and Ruth, but then she got to a point where she would not go any further. Her words indicated that she was a caring daughter-in-law, concerned about her mother-in-law and attached to her, but her faith did not sustain her past a certain point.

Therefore, though she cried tears when faced with the prospect of going back, she made no move to stay committed to the course she was on. Therefore, even though she had traveled some of the distance and may have even intended to travel the entire distance, she turned back and returned to her gods. Ruth on the other hand, as we discussed last week, “clung” tenaciously to Naomi and declared, “Don’t urge me to leave you to turn back from you. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God” (v. 16).

All of us have places that will be breaking points for us if we’re not careful. We may traverse a certain distance with God and even do it quite cheerfully, but then turn back when we face unexpected trials or simply lose steam in our walks with Christ. When we’re tempted to turn away from God, we can confess our struggle to Him, ask Him to renew our resolve, and ask Him to help us make it past the point that threatens to break us.

2. Pushing forward means pushing past the opposition.

Ruth not only persevered in her tough circumstances by travelling from Moab to Judah by foot and dealing with all the emotions she must have felt as a widow, she also pushed ahead when opposing voices told her she didn’t have to take such a difficult path. When God calls us to a particular course, we will have naysayers that urge us not take the course. These may be people who are not in close relationship with God or these may be godly people who may not know or understand what God is telling us.

Naomi urged Ruth to return to her people so that she can find “rest” once again in the home of new husband (v. 9). Although Naomi was a godly woman, she tried to persuade her daughters-in-law to return to their family and gods so that her daughters-in-law would avoid the suffering and hardship that would most likely be inevitable if they continued on with her.

In their day and time, a woman’s role centered around being a wife and mother; therefore, her daughters-in-law only hope of finding security and provision they needed would be in the home of a husband. Naomi was concerned that if her daughters-in-law travelled with her that they would lose all chance of finding husbands as she had no more sons and was too old to bear more. Ruth understood that the only rest she needed was that which she found in Naomi’s God. So, she maintained her insistence that she go with Naomi and Naomi relented. However, Ruth’s move was bold as she, a widow, had no promise of provision or protection in Judah.

Ruth not only had to firmly hold her own when Naomi attempted to persuade her to go back, she also had to maintain her position when Orpah decided to turn back. Orpah and Ruth were both Moabites. They could have helped and supported each other once in Judah, as they both would have been foreigners. They had developed a close relationship as sisters-in-law, and no doubt Ruth was disheartened and discouraged when Orpah decided she could go no further.

What can we learn from Ruth’s actions here? Godly friends are good, and we should seek out godly counsel. But our decision to follow God will be tested. At times, God will allow us to walk through circumstances where we feel alone and others don’t rush in to give us the support we need or may even draw back from us when we forge ahead with God’s plans. Even in those circumstances, as Ruth does here, we should not be discouraged from going on but keep walking down the path God has for us.

3. Our breaking points may not be far from God’s blessings.

Even though it appeared that Ruth would only find more tragedy in leaving behind promising connections in Moab and going to Judah, she, in fact, by choosing to follow God, walked straight into unimaginable blessing. However, she could not have known what awaited her down the road leading away from Moab. What if she had followed Orpah and turned back at the point when circumstances looked and felt the worse? What if she hadn’t trusted God in her bleak circumstance — and turned back to her gods?

Sometimes our biggest blessings await us on the other side of our pain. While it might appear that nothing but suffering and hardship await us when we walk in God’s way, we see when we fast-forward in the story (Ruth does indeed find a husband and bears a son in the lineage of Jesus!) that God can work in our most difficult situations and turn them not only for our good but His glory. A.A. Thomson says this in The Biblical Illustrator:

How unfit we are to judge of an unfinished providence, and how necessary it is, if we would understand aright the reasons of God’s ways, that we should wait and see the web with its many colors woven out! Three short months, during which those dark providences were suddenly to blossom into prosperity and joy, would give to that sorrowful woman another interpretation of her long exile in Moab. When the night seems the darkest we are often nearest the dawn. Begin to tune thy harp, O weeping saint and weary pilgrim! ‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand.’ Learn to wait. When the great drama of our earth’s history is ended … God will again pronounce all to be ‘very good.’

Conclusion:

All of us will reach places in our spiritual walks that threaten to break us. “I can’t take another minute of this, God,” we may shout. We may want to turn away, escape to worldly distractions and comfort. We can learn from Ruth, though, that a woman who perseveres is a woman who finds blessings on the other side of her pain.

While me may not always know or understand why God allows what He does or why we’re in the situations we’re in, we can trust that all works for good for those who love God and walk in His ways.

Update: A few months after writing this post, I got a better understanding of the reason God had me call the woman at the call center back. Some time after this day of phone calls, I called to make another appointment and recognized the woman’s name on the phone as the woman God instructed me to call back. I told her I recognized her name and reminded her of the conversation we had previously had. She ended up being a different woman with the same name, but our conversation opened up a door with this woman where she told me that she was Muslim. We talked for a few moments about Christianity, and I shared a little with her about my faith. She was very open to talking with me, and I believe that I planted a seed with her that day. God had her in mind all along, although His plans did not make any sense to me months prior.

Related Resources:

Ever been in a bad situation and it just gets worse? Check out the other posts from the this series “Hope When You’re at the End of Your Rope: Lessons From Ruth on Trust, Surrender, and Healing.” In the study, we look at the story of Ruth where will draw lessons the next few weeks on the hope we have when life gets hard, and we feel abandoned and in need of rescue.  This post is adapted from the second post in this series. Check out the other posts: Part 1: Why God’s Way Is Always Best, Part 3: The Blessings of Following God,  Part 4: Trusting God When It Doesn’t Make Sense, Part 5: There Are No Shortcuts to God’s Promises, and Part 6: Walking Into All God Has for You.

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 *Updated and adapted from post published November 21, 2019.

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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God, Why Have You Led Me Here?

 

beach-962787_1280

I hung up the phone, my heart racing. Well that definitely didn’t go the way I had expected, I thought to myself. I had made the phone call at God’s bidding and said what He wanted, but the other person’s reaction hadn’t been the positive one I anticipated.

Afterwards, I sat there fuming at God. Really, God? I knew better than to resist His instruction to me, but I wanted to question His will at the moment. I wanted to run in the opposite direction and refuse to do another thing for Him.

When Doing God’s Will Leads to Suffering

Here’s what I was all tied up in knots about: If He was going to ask me to do an action for Him, I felt that it should end in good. The situation should end with a happy ending, with a ribbon tied in a bow on top. But yet again, I had stepped out to do an uncomfortable action because He had told me to, and it had ended in circumstances that were not what I wanted or planned.

Quite honestly, I felt that there had been too many of those situations lately. To human logic, it makes sense to do the hard thing that results in an award, the raise at work, the leading of someone to Christ, the healing, the miracle. But what about the hard action that leads to persecution, the argument, or the confusing events that don’t add up. What then?

In those scenarios, we can feel like God is being cruel to us because of what He has asked us to do. We may be infuriated by the fact that He has led us to a place where we are encountering hardship that we wouldn’t be encountering if we hadn’t listened to Him. We wouldn’t be the first to feel this way.

In the book of Job, Job becomes fed up with the hardship that has come in his life. He essentially tells God as much, accusing God of cruelty and persecution (Job 30:21, ESV). However, we know from reading the rest of the book of Job that God was not being malicious to Job — nor is He that to us. God allowed the affliction in Job’s life not to be cruel or play a mean game with Job’s life, but because He had a purpose. And Satan, not God, was the responsible party for the trouble that came into Job’s life. God did permit Satan’s actions, but He did so to prove Satan wrong and provide encouragement to many other sufferers who would come after Job.

In fact, God responds to Job’s accusation of cruelty and asks him this important question, “Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?” (Job 40:8, ESV). The Message Translation words it like this: “Are you calling me a sinner so you can be a saint?” In other words, God asks Job if he is able to stand against Him on his own righteousness.

In our own lives, when we feel that God is being cruel to us because He has allowed or led us into undesirable circumstances, we see that God is more than capable of running the universe — and often our accusations of Him are made because we don’t understand things from His perspective. As Jon Bloom points in “When God Feels Cruel” on desiringgod.org, we have to trust in God’s goodness despite what our feelings tell us.

Certainly, after listening to God’s argument, Job repents of his original position and acknowledges that God is sovereign and worthy of praise no matter the events in his life. Similarly, in my own situation, while I didn’t get the same monologue God gave Job, God stopped me in my tracks by offering a divine response to my human argument.

What God Says About the Suffering That Comes From Doing His Will

The next morning during my quiet time, as I was still fuming over the injustice of the reality that good doesn’t always come for doing God’s will, I came across this gem of Scripture in 1 Peter 4:19: “So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.”

Say what? I didn’t have to wait for a thunderclap from heaven to signal God’s answer. His response waited quietly right in front of me silencing every complaint I wanted to raise in His direction. I knew He wanted me to stop resisting Him and accept the situation He had ordained in my life. Like Job, I had to acknowledge God’s supreme power and knowledge even when things weren’t making sense according to my own wisdom.

When we’re in a place where we don’t like where God has brought us, we can break down this verse and look at a few ideas that may help us in our circumstance:

1. We will suffer for doing His will.

If we look at other translations of this verse, the wording is arranged to say not, “Those who suffer for doing the will of their Creator” but to say something more along the lines of, “If God’s will is for you to suffer.” For instance, the New Life Version says, “If God wants you to suffer,” and the New Century Version says, “Then those who suffer as God wants.”

No matter which translation you look at, the passage highlights the idea that God’s will and suffering are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes God’s will leads straight into suffering, and it’s difficult to accept in those moments because we don’t always know all the whys.

However, if we look at other sections of 1 Peter, we see that suffering in doing God’s will is something we should rejoice over — not something that should derail us from our calling.

2. Despite what happens, we need to commit ourselves to Him.

I love this next section. The verse tells us what we should do in the situation where obedience doesn’t appear to be paying off: “Commit ourselves to our faithful Creator.” The temptation is to get angry, to tell God we will control things, that we will “take it from here.” But this is where trust comes in. Do we believe He loves us? Do we believe His way is perfect and He knows all things? Do we believe He is worthy of our trust?

The passage assures us that He is trustworthy. In fact, quite interestingly, Peter uses the word “faithful” to describe the One who holds us and all of our circumstances together. He is faithful not just when events are favorable in our life — but even in the midst of suffering.

3. Even when we suffer, we need to continue to do good.

Lastly, the verse urges us to continue to do good even when it doesn’t make sense, the way is hard, and we want to give up. Quite honestly, what we all want to do when our situation doesn’t go the way we thought it would is run in the opposite direction. But this verse urges us to “continue to do good.” And that sometimes is the hardest thing. To continue when you don’t have the results you want, you don’t know why, and it doesn’t make sense.

Friend, we have a God who knows what He is doing. When the way is unclear, and we can’t see what He is doing, the passage urges us to keep on doing what we know is right. My former senior pastor used to say, “When you can’t see His hand, trust His heart.” In other words, when you have no earthly idea why circumstances are going the way they are or why He has allowed what He has in your life, you can still trust that God is good and His way is flawless.

When I survey my life, I know Him to be a faithful God. I can look back and see how He was constant through times where I was not. He has always been there for me and you, and He will continue to be faithful, or as one of my favorite worship songs says — “do it again.”

Let’s choose to trust Him even when His will leads to hardship rather than good.

* Updated and adapted from post originally published January 19, 2019.

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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