Challenges On the Journey of Life

If God is for us, why do we have so many problems? Christians aren't exempt from them; we too experience illness, temptation, disappointment, grief, and a hundred other problems we could list. Our journey through life is filled with all kinds of hazards and bumps in the road, and will be until we enter heaven. They may change as we get older, but they never completely go away.

We live in a hostile world that constantly seeks to pull us away from God, and sometimes its pressures are enormous. In other words, one reason we are vulneralbe to life's stresses and temptations is because of what happens around us. Problems and temptations seek out the weak places in our lives; they always exploit out weaknesses - always.

Why do we have so many problems, even as Christians? One reason is because we are part of a vast spiritual conflict - one that won't end until Satan's final defeat at the end of time. In addition, our old sinful nature is still alive, competing with the new nature God has given us. The Holy Spirit now lives within us, but this doesn't free us from life's problems or guarantee that we'll never sin. In fact, one reason the Holy Spirit has been given to us is because God knows how weak we are.

The Bible is intensely practical, and one of the reasons God gave it to us is so we'll be better prepared to deal with life's problems and temptations. We all face temptations of one kind or another, for temptation is universal. Temptation is being urged or enticed to do something wrong. Temptation isn't the same thing as sin, and it isn't a sin to be tempted. Temptation is being enticed to do wrong; sin is actually doing it. It isn't a sin to be tempted, but it is a sin to give in to the temptation. God sometimes allows us to be tempted so we will realize our weaknesses and seek His help to overcome them. Don't just fight temptation - learn from it.

Repent when you fail, and immediately seek God's forgiveness and restoration. Sin breaks our fellowship with God - but it doesn't end our relationship. We are still His children, even when we disobey. We feel guilty and ashamed, and sometimes we simply want to hide. But God still loves us, and He wants to forgive us and welcome us back! When you fail, repent and claim God's promise of forgiveness and restoration. The only sin God cannot forgive is the sin of refusing His forgiveness. When you sin, don't excuse it or ignore it or blame it on someone else. Admit it...repent of it...and then rejoice that God has fully forgiven you.

Ask God to help you to learn the secret of true contentment. One way is to make thanksgiving a part of your daily life. Learn to trust God in everything.

Fear causes us to doubt God's promises and disbelieve His love. Fear can paralyze us and keep us from believing God and stepping out in faith. The opposite of fear is trust - trust in God and His unchanging love. Once we realize God is in control and He holds us in His loving hands, we can meet life's dangers and uncertainties with confidence. After all, if we can trust God for our eternal salvation, can't we also trust Him for our lives right now?

It's hard to trust God when danger threatens or everything seems to be collapsing around us. Fear comes much easier to us than faith. But never forget: Fear can banish faith, but faith can banish fear. True faith involves trust - trust in what Christ has done for us, and trust in God's goodness and mercy.

How should you deal with anxiety and fear? First, turn them over to Christ. Don't deny them - and don't cling to them. Confess them to Christ, and then ask Him to lift them from your shoulders. Second, stand firmly on God's promises. Fear vanishes when it is exposed to the promise of God's Word. God is with you, no matter how difficult or confusing life becomes. You are never alone if you know Christ - never. Saturate your mind and heart with the promises of God's Word.

Pray first of all for strength in the face of whatever you fear, for God helps us hold on in the midst of life's storms. Pray also for wisdom to deal with whatever id worrying you, some practical steps may change the situation. Pray as well that God will act to change your circumstances, according to His will. He doesn't always do what we want Him to - but He knows what's best for us, and He can be trusted.

The Christian faith isn't a set of rules but a relationship - a personal, intimate, daily walk with the living God. How we act toward someone is a reflection of our feelings about them. When you truly love someone, you want to please and honor them by the way you act. In other words, how you treat someone shows whether or not you really care about them. Acting disrespectfully or ignoring their wishes shows you don't really love them, no matter what you say.

Suffering and tragedy touch us all, no matter who we are. In the midst of life's tragedies, He wants to assure us of His presence and love - even if we don't understand why He allowed them to happen. He knows what we are going through, for He experienced evil's fiercest assault when His beloved Son suffered the pangs of death and hell. God understands our suffering, for Christ endured far greater suffering than we ever will. The Cross tells us that God understands our pain and confusion - but more than that, it tells us He loves us.

Whether we realize it or not, every time life turns against us we stand at a crossroads. When disappointment or tragedy or suffering strike, we have a decision to make: Will we turn away from God, or will we turn toward Him? Will we refuse His help, or will we seek it? Will we depend on Him? Which road will we take? Our journey through life is never smooth and untroubled. Life isn't always fair, nor is it always the way we wish it were. Disappointment, tragedy, grief, failure, disability, illness, injustice, rejection, suffering, grief - these will come our way, sometimes at the most unexpected times or in the most unexpected ways.

Make it your goal to build strong foundations for your life - foundations constructed from prayer and the truth of God's Word.

Life turns against us in many ways, but one experience is common to us all: disappointment. Repeated disappointment almost always triggers a series of other reactions: discouragement, anger, frustration, bitterness, resentment, even depression. Unless we learn to deal with disappointment, it will rob us of joy and poison our souls.

Disappointment and failure aren't always wrong; we all experience them, and they are part of life. Nor is every failure or disappointment our responsibility. But sometimes it is our fault, and we always need to examine ourselves honestly and prayerfully to see if this is the case. Sometimes our failure may have been caused by a particular sin - something we allowed to take root in our souls that set us on the path to inevitable disappointment or failure. These also become sin when we allow them to overwhelm us and block God's plan for our lives.

Disppointment or failure are not signs that God has forsaken you or stopped loving you. Even when we fail Him, God's love for us never fails, and He always stands ready to forgive and restore us to Himself. Sometimes God uses life's disappointments to draw us closer to Himself or teach us patience and trust. He also may use them to redirect us toward His will. Don't let failure or disappointment cut you off from God or make you think the future is hopeless. When God closes one door, He often opens another - if we seek it.

We need others, and without them life is not great. We weren't meant to live in isolation; God didn't make us that way. Instead, God put within us a yearning for companionship - with others and supremely with Himself. God knows we need others, and our greatest joys often come from our relationships. Nevertheless, no area of human life is so full of difficulties and heartaches as relationships. Our deepest problems are within ourselves - within our own hearts and minds - and until we confront them and seek God's help to change us, we'll never completely solve them.

The Bible gives us a series of principles to guide our relatioinships.

We can't change the past; we can only seek God's forgiveness for what we did wrong.

Nothing releases us from the past or opens the door to reconciliation as completely as forgiveness. Even if the other person refuses to admit any fault or scorns our forgiveness, that must not hold us back.

Nothing demonstrates our human frailty more forcefully than pain. Pain reminds us that no matter who we are or how healthy we seem, life is fragile and ultimately outside our control. Most of all, pain reminds us that someday our bodies will wear out and die and this life will come to an end.

When we're healthy, we easily become busy and preoccupied with the present - and end up forgetting God. But when accident or illness set us aside, we have time to reflect on what's really important. Most of all, we have time to examine our relationship with Christ and recommit ourselves and our futures into His loving hands.

No matter what you are going through, someday it will end and you will be with Christ forever. Earth's troubles fade in the light of heaven's hope.

Almost every hurt in life involves some kind of loss - of health, friendship, financial security, inner peace, even hope. With each loss comes sorrow, or even the pain of grief. Nothing is more painful in life than the loss of someone we deeply love, and when it happns, our grief can be almost overwhelming. The closer we were to someone, the greater will be our emptiness - and the greater too will be our grief.

Our hope of heaven tempers our grief, but it doesn't erase it. When we grieve over someone who has died in Christ, we are sorrowing not for them but for ourselves. Our grief isn't a sign of weak faith, but of great love. Recovering from grief isn't a single event, but a process. Grief grips us suddenly, but lets go of us slowly.

When a loved one dies, our first response is often numbness and shock. We even may feel guilty, irrationally blaming ourselves for not doing more to prevent their death or not being present when they died. We may even feel angry - toward the doctors or nurses, or toward the loved one for leaving us, or even toward God.

Turn your grief over to God. Your grief over the death of someone you loved may be the biggest burden you will ever carry. Why carry it alone? Why not turn it over to God? Don't try to carry your grief alone! Instead, turn to your loving heavenly Father and ask Him to lift it from your shoulders - and slowly but surely He will. Even in the midst of grief, we can still be thankful, and thankfulness can act like a soothing balm on our hurt. Although we mourn the loss of a loved one, we can still thank God for the years we had together and the many ways they enriched our lives. Don't just recall the good times you had; thank God for them! They were His gracious gift to you.

See each day as a gift from God. The first thing we should do when we awake is thank God for the gift of another day.

Commit your time to God. We are accountable to Him for the way we use our time, and once a minute passes it can never be reclaimed. Set aside time for God and for others. Take time for your own needs. We all need rest and recreation; God made us this way. Some people feel guilty if they take a vacation or even a few hours off, but they shouldn't. Someone who is chronically exhausted from lack of sleep or improper eating is much more susceptible to Satan's attacks.

We can't change the past, but we can change the future. Even Christians aren't immune from making wrong choices. One of life's hardest lessons is that we have to live with the consequences of our decisions - and that's why one of the most important skills we can ever develop in life is the ability to make wise choices.

God has a personal, individual plan for each of us. It embraces the big things in life: whom we will marry, what our career will be, where we will live, even when we will die. It also includes the details of our daily lives: decisions about our families, finances, leisure time, friendships, and countless other choices we make.

How can we discover God's will when we face a major decision? First, commit your decision to God. Make it a matter of regular prayer, asking God to guide you and make His will known to you. Ask Him for the wisdom you need, and ask Him also to show you if you are resisting His will. If so, repent of it, and submit your will afresh to the Lordship of Christ. Second, search the Scriptures. God never leads us to do anything that is contrary to His written Word. Third, understand your circumstances. God isn't only working in us; He also is working around us. Often God guides us through our circumstances. Fourth, seek godly advise. God has given some people a special gift of wisdom, and when we face a decision, it's often helpful to seek their counsel. Weigh carefully what they say, or course, but God may use them to help you understand your situation. Fifth, trust the Holy Spirit's guidance. When we honestly seek His will, God often gives us an inner conviction or prompting to confirm which way He wants us to go. This prompting comes from the Holy Spirit, who lives within us if we know Christ. This inner conviction isn't just a feeling; it is a settled peace that God is leading us in a certain way. The Holy Spirit doesn't work in isolation, however, and we must guard against confusing our own desires with the Holy Spirit's prompting. We still need to pray, study God's Word, examine our circumstances, and seek godly advise. But God often uses this inner prompting to move us toward a final decision. Finally, trust God for the outcome. Once God leads you to make a decision, don't draw back. Instead, trust His leading, and believe He goes before you - for He does. Sometimes we'll only be certain God led us after we make a decision, but when we truly are seeking His will, He has promised to guide us even if the way is unclear.

Don't sit back and wait for some great revelation to come to you while life passes you by. Sometimes it's best to start moving in the direction you think God may want you to go, and then trust Him to lead you - closing doors He doesn't want you to go through and opening up others.

God gave marriage to us for our companionship. God also established marriage for our mutual help and encouragement. God gave us marriage for our mutual happiness and pleasure. A further reason God gave marriage to us was to provide for the well-being of our families. God gave marriage to us for a further reason: to reflect Christ.

The basic problem behind most marital difficulties can be summed up in one word: conflict. Some conflicts come from problems that people bring into their marriages. They get married from feelings of insecurity or inferiority or from loneliness or from sexual passion or to escape a difficult home situation - any of which can become a source of conflict later on. Or a person may be immature and irresponsible, always blaming others for their problems - and this causes conflict. Other conflicts are caused by problems that couples create for themselves. One other source of conflict needs to be mentioned, however, and that is spiritual disharmony.

Conflicts in marriage may be caused by many things, but behind almost every one of is a more basic cause: selfishness. Too many husbands and wives enter into marriage with the idea that their spouse exists for one purpose: to make them happy. True love, however, is not self-centered. A marriage based only on physical attraction or romantic emotions is almost certainly doomed to failure right from the start.

What is true love? It is an act of the will - a conscious decision to do what is best for the other person instead of ourselves.

Every divorce represents a broken dream, a shattered hope, a ruined expectation. Every divorce also represents a violation of God's original blueprint for marriage - a blueprint that included the commitment of a husband and wife to each other "as long as we both shall live."
Behind many divorces are pressures that may have taken years to develop.

The first cornerstone in developing a healthy marriage is also the most important: Commit your marriage to God. Good marriage requires three person: the husband, the wife - and God. Committing your marriage to God also means growing together in your relationship with Christ. God's will isn't just for us to grow spiritually as individuals, but to grow spiritually together as a couple if we are married. Nothing will bind you together more firmly than learning to walk daily with Christ - praying together, reading God's Word together, going to church together, having fellowship together.

The second step follows from the first: Commit yourself to your marriage. One of the ways we demonstrate our love for God is by demonstrating our love for our spouses. What does it mean to commit yourself to your marriage? It means to give priority to your marriage, putting its welfare first. That means looking at everything you want to do in terms of the impact on your marriage. It means seeing your marriage as a responsibility and not just a privilege.

A third step in building a strong marriage is to treat each other with affection and respect. Mutual affection and respect are both essential for a strong marriage. One important way to show respect for your spouse is to learn the art of communicating. This is more than just talking; it also means learning to listen. It means a willingness to share your thoughts with each other, without fearing your spouse will reject you or laugh at you.

Don't let a day go by without telling your spouse that you love them. Show your affection spontaneously and frequently. In addition, be courteous, tender, and thoughtful to each other. Think also of special ways you can show you care. Often the little things count most. Humor is important in marriage. Be an encourager. Learn to forgive each other as well. Be sensitive also to each other's moods and hurts, and help each other when hard times come.

Avoid falling in love with the wrong person of for the wrong reasons.

Every stage of life has its own temptations and dangers, and Satan will do all he can to exploit them. As we grow older, we may not face the same temptations we did when we were young - but we will still be tempted.

God's love for you never changes, no matter what problems you face or how unsettled life becomes. Nothing takes Him by surprise, and He can be trusted to do what is best. Instead of letting fear and anxiety paralyze you, learn to commit everything to God.