Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Faith is Made Perfect in Adversity

POINTS of temptation in life, where giving up can seem the only momentary option, can drive us into an anxiously depressed pole.  Overwhelmed with just how bad life is, we may panic and lose all sense for logic and reason.
The opportunity during these moments is to slow down, take some deep breaths, and consider that what seems horrendous is probably nothing so threatening.
Faith says to such a situation, “Relax, press in, trust God, and everything will be fine!”
Let’s not besmirch the presence of difficulty.  God has a role for hardship in propelling our faith toward a deeper reliance on Him.  These trials that bear themselves against us right now make us pine for better times of past, but they may just as easily prove to be the very thing that awakened us from a sabotaging spiritual slumber.
Adversity awakens the giant.  It evokes alert courage for action.
Adversity was made for faith, for faith’s made perfect in adversity.
The hard thing ahead of us is made easier when we see how God’s helped make hard things behind us doable.  We only have to believe the hard thing is possible.  God proves faithful in the rest.  All we need to do is show up, to keep stepping by faith, and God will lead us through the valley of the shadow of death.  And He will return to us our joy, hope and peace if we will just trust Him.
God adds something to us when our faith refuses to give up.
He takes our faith — as small as a mustard seed — and He makes of it something tantamount to perfection in adversity.  Faith cannot rise without it.
The more adverse the situation, the more we show up, cheerfully, because by choice we can, the more God blesses us with His strength in our weakness.
© 2016 Steve Wickham.

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