Difficulties hit without warning. Sometimes it feels like life is falling apart. You might wonder how you’ll survive, or how you’ll recover. Why would God let something so bad happen? Sometimes it just feels hard to function as that trail lingers in your stomach, stealing your appetite, joy, and hope. I can’t promise this key will solve all of this, but I can promise it will help you endure any hardship.
What Hardships Do You Face?
When life gets busy, it’s easy to get caught up in the flow. We take each day and difficulty as it comes. We focus on the difficulties at hand and can often lose perspective of what’s important.
Another factor that causes us to lose perspective is focusing on the next goal and the next stage so we can progress through the nebulous challenges of life. However, it’s because we lose perspective that these trails hit us so hard. You might be saving up for a car and then get hit with some unforeseen expense that sets you back another three months. Whatever it is, when something interrupts one of these goals it feels like the rug is pulled out from under us.
Test this out with your own life. What trials are you facing? Write them down so you can deal with them one by one. Why is that trial so hard? Again, write this down. Is it hard because you don’t have the time to deal with it? Or maybe it’s hard because it impacts someone you love?
Once you’ve identified the trial and the reason it’s upsetting you, write down the cost each of these trials presents. Does this cost you time, money, relationships, or is it a loss that can’t be recovered?
Sometimes this step right here can resolve some stress in your life as you’ll see the cost is really not that much and therefore you don’t need to worry so much about it.
Putting Life Back Into Perspective
Now that we understand what these trials are and why they bother us, we can look at them in light of God’s perspective.
What does God care about? What does he say we should care about? And what better way to put our goals into perspective than focusing on the goals God’s called us to? I’ll list a few. God’s called us to:
- Grow in our relationship with him.
- Care for and love those around us.
- Point the lost back to him.
- Strengthen and encourage believers in their faith.
- Live righteous lives by following God’s commands.
With these five goals in mind, I’d like to list a few goals that can often slip into our focus, which God doesn’t call us to. I’m not saying these goals are bad, but that God doesn’t necessarily say it’s what we should strive for. These will likely be challenging, but I can promise you I often find myself focusing on these goals also, so you aren’t alone. God doesn’t call us to:
- Accumulate lots of wealth.
- Become popular or famous.
- Reach your dream job.
- Live a long life.
- Live an easy life.
- Never say goodbye to a friend or family member.
These goals aren’t necessarily bad. In fact, most of these goals God will give us in eternity. So each of these goals here are really only bad if they supersede the things God has called us to. However, these goals don’t help us endure any hardship, in many ways these are the goals that cause our hardships.
Think about it, if your goal is to accumulate wealth—even if you have noble reasons such as to set yourself up for the future—if a financial difficulty arises, it feels as if everything is falling apart.
The Key To Endure Any Hardship
Look back at those trials you wrote down. Do any of your trials hinder one of these five God-given goals? Or do they hinder our goals?
Oftentimes, the difficulties we face don’t impact the goals in the first list.
This is the key I learned.
When trials hit and we find ourselves frustrated and overwhelmed, it helps to lift our sight above our little goals and remind ourselves of God’s big-picture goals.
Things don’t just happen at random. God is at work writing his marvelous story. If God allows it to happen, there must be a reason. Maybe our financial hardship helps pull us closer to him. Maybe the death of a friend causes us to long for eternity more and therefore serve God more diligently.
God is always willing to jeopardize goals in the second list so he can further his goals in the first list.
This might seem harsh of God, but it’s actually very loving. God knows he’s the only one who can satisfy us and fill us with joy. He knows we need him, which is why he lets our plans fail so we can be drawn back to him and his goals.
But it gets even better.
If you are walking faithfully before God, desiring to make his name known, and being a wise steward, when something happens outside of your control that seriously impacts God’s goals for our lives, we can trust him with it. You can’t change your circumstances, but God can, and for some reason he’s not. This means God is somehow going to use this hardship to propel you further toward the goals he has for you.
And trust me. God’s goals for you are way better than anything we could come up with.
The Step-By-Step Process to Endure Any Hardship
So the next time you feel any sort of stress in your life walk through this process.
1. Analyze the trial
What happened to make you feel stressed, frustrated, or anxious? Write it down
2. Evaluate the cost
Why does it make you feel stressed? Is the cost of this trial time, money, success, life advancement, or a loss of a relationship? Write it down
3. Determine the impact
Does this difficulty hinder your goals or God’s goals? Write down why it’s so important you reach this goal and why this cost is such a big deal.
4. Imagine the potential
Can this difficulty be used to advance God’s goals? If so, which ones? Write down how you could utilize this trial to advance God’s goals.
5. Estimate God’s Reason
Is the cost of this hardship worth it to advance God’s goals? Write down why you think God might let this happen. Yes Satan’s and his demons are at work trying to destroy us and can us or attack God’s plan for us, but God is greater and he only allows them to strike in ways that will further his plan in the long run.
6. Surrender the Unknown
If something doesn’t make sense, give it over to God. Trust him with it. He knows the future. It’s his goals we are striving for after all. Write down God’s promises from the Bible that apply to this situation.
Live Free
Even with this step-by-step process, you will still face hardships and they will still ache deep into your hearts, but the more you apply these truths, the more freedom you will find. With time, you will discover difficulties become less and less burdensome as you shift your focus from your life and your goals to God’s goals, his grand plan of redemption, and eternity.
I pray this process will enable you to endure any hardship, grant you freedom, and drive you closer to God in the process.
I pray it will enable you to live wilder.
If this post encouraged you, I’d strongly recommend you check out my post: INTO THE WILD: How To Fight Your Fear of God’s Calling
If you are curious what I mean by live wilder, check out my post: What Does it Mean to Live Wilder?
