Do you trust God in the hard times?
I am in the midst of some really hard situations right now. Some of them are affecting me personally, some are impacting those close to me. In the midst of hard times, it becomes really easy to try and fix everything, especially for men. That’s our job. Sometimes we try to change things too fast, other times not fast enough. Sometimes we struggle to understand all that God is trying to do and we push ourselves out of the struggle only to find that God had good intentions for us right where we were. Jerry Bridges in his book “Is God Really In Control?” says, “The sovereignty of God is often questioned because man does not understand what God is doing. And, because He does not act as we think He should, we conclude He cannot act for our best.” The reality though, is that we as sinners are broken and we cannot always or even often see the good that God is bringing about through the hard times.
God shows us in His Word, through His prophet Habakkuk the attitude we ought to have when hard times come our way. In Chapter 3:17-19, we see Habakkuk respond to the trials he is experiencing:
Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer’s;
he makes me tread on my high places.
God also shows us His sovereign purpose for sufferings in our lives in Romans 5:3-5 where Paul says, “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” This is so that we can know that God is working in our lives and that we can trust Him, no matter the situation.
Do you trust God in the hard times? Do you have a testimony of God working through a trial in your life?