About the
time I think I've got a good handle on this life and faith business, something
comes along to remind me that I have a long way to go. While we may feel
our faith grow over the years and see how far we've come, there’s
such a depth to our relationship with God that we can't "max
out" on it, not ever. There's always room for significant
improvement in our faith in the Almighty.
No one likes to struggle with life's situations, especially
the big ones. One situation that frequently comes to my mind is when the
apostle Paul took his request to God three times for deliverance from a
debilitating malady. And God told him "My grace is sufficient." [1] It is one thing to know it in your
mind, but another to feel it in your heart when you can't see how God's grace
can possibly be sufficient. And given a choice, you'd be tempted to
choose being healed over grace. Ouch! What a yardstick with which to measure
our faith! Our shortcomings are no surprise to God, but they can be to
us.
While it's not pleasant to see our spiritual deficiencies,
it gives us the opportunity to work with God to deal with the situation and
make appropriate changes. Charles
Stanley, in his “30 Life Principles,” states, “The dark moments in our life
will last only so long as is necessary for God to accomplish His purpose in
us.”[2] I
suspect the difficult times may not be so much about the specific thing we
struggle with as much as the state of our faith in general. And the thing we struggle with is only
there to shine a light on the real problem.
Perhaps we tend to ask God for the wrong blessings. In addition to prayers of healing,
maybe the better prayer after a certain point is to ask for understanding and
faith: understanding what God is saying to you in this struggle, and faith in
God’s promise that His grace really is sufficient. I feel confident of one thing: there
is a reason and a purpose for every struggle. And on the other side of
that struggle is a blessing; a blessing bigger and more significant than the
difficulty.
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