journey onWord with us

If you travel long enough on any journey, there will be some adventures that you did not expect. Whether we would admit it or not, we all have expectations about the perfect family (there isn’t one), the perfect job (haven’t found it), financial well-being, great health and that others would care as much for us as much as we do for them. But along the way, the adventures cause our expectations to diminish. Kids aren’t perfect, a job is lost, debt mounts, and others don’t treat us as we treat them. So how do we keep the glass-half-full view of life in spite of all the adventures?

Even for Christ followers, it is easy to lose joy when adventures seem to dominate our lives. Someone reading this post may even feel that you have tried so hard and “Why hasn’t God come through”? I have now lived long enough to realize that everyone will go through seasons of life that are hard, may seem unfair, and border on almost unbearable. “Does God care when you hurt?”,  “Does prayer work?”,  “And why doesn’t He intervene quicker?”, are a few of the questions that you and I are apt to ask when the days are long and burdens hard.

Logic tells me that you can already articulate a 2010 adventure that has caused you to wonder what God is doing. It was no different for those heroes of faith that marked the pages of Scripture.

-Joseph faced lies, prison and was forgotten during his long struggle, but God came through …
-Abraham waited for a son and then was asked to sacrifice him, but God came through …
-David was persecuted and mistreated, but God came through …
-Paul went through great pressure, persecution and prison, but God gave him joy …
-Peter followed God and it cost him his life …

Encouragement can be drawn from our heroes, but I am convinced that many who read these posts already know lots of Scripture and could teach lessons on the men listed above. Reality is that your adventures may have worn you out, and there is a battle going on between emotional weariness and your long-held faith. So how do you again live with a glass-half-full view, in spite of real pain?

Along my journey, I have learned that I don’t have all the answers. But He does, and He will give us direction. That doesn’t mean that the perfect job will come, family members will straighten out (they have a free will), or that finances will immediately get better. But if moment by moment, and day by day, you will give each adventure to the Father by faith, something will happen on the inside that only He can do. I Peter 1:6-7 gives His view:

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith-of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

We can look at the heroes and know they made it. The adventures they faced were hard, and often long. God knows what He is doing in our lives. He desires that we seek Him and trust Him in all of our adventures. Does He care? …Yes! Does He answer prayer? …Yes! Is His timing best? … Always! Don’t try to figure it all out, just trust Him today, and for your tomorrow’s. I promise He will come through.