Four years ago, I hit rock bottom. I was going through a very rough time in my life. God reached out to me one morning through the devotional book, Streams of the Desert. The day and timing for the message from God was absolutely perfect. This helped me a lot in getting through that rough time.
The verse of the devotion was "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1)".
It talked about the question that is often asked about 'Why didn't God help me sooner?' The devotion then began to explain that "God will not act on your schedule" and "desires to change you through the trouble and cause you to learn a lesson from it." I thought about this and began to realize that it wasn't God that was going to change me. It was me and my will to change for Him. I continued reading and the verse that most stuck out to me the most was "He will be with you in trouble all day and through the night. Afterward he will take you out of it, but not until you have stopped being restless and worried over it and have become calm and quiet. Then He will say, It is enough." I began to think about what I just read. Through all the troubles I had experienced, I had finally realized that I had nothing to worry about anymore and I was excited about the next chapter in my life that God had planned for me.
I wasn't nervous or scared anymore because I didn't need to be. I was now calm and ready and I was prepared to accept whatever God wanted me to do. I continued to read the rest of the devotion about trials. "There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is simply to try to get rid of the trial, and then to be thankful when it is over. The other is to recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing than we have ever before experienced, and to accept it with delight as an opportunity of receiving a greater measure of God's divine grace." From my experience, I chose option number two. For what I believe, the trials and hardships He put me through was a test. If I truly changed my heart for Him, then that was all He wanted from me. It was a test to show that I couldn't survive life on my own, and that everything I did had to be for Him and not myself. It was a challenge to prove that God's love and grace will win over anything. I was hopeless without God and God proved to me that I truly needed Him in my life.
I wasn't nervous or scared anymore because I didn't need to be. I was now calm and ready and I was prepared to accept whatever God wanted me to do. I continued to read the rest of the devotion about trials. "There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is simply to try to get rid of the trial, and then to be thankful when it is over. The other is to recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing than we have ever before experienced, and to accept it with delight as an opportunity of receiving a greater measure of God's divine grace." From my experience, I chose option number two. For what I believe, the trials and hardships He put me through was a test. If I truly changed my heart for Him, then that was all He wanted from me. It was a test to show that I couldn't survive life on my own, and that everything I did had to be for Him and not myself. It was a challenge to prove that God's love and grace will win over anything. I was hopeless without God and God proved to me that I truly needed Him in my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment