Comfort for Tough Times

God is good - all the time! When things are going well, we revel in God's goodness, that our prayers are answered, and that our faith is growing every day...

But when times are tough... when we are having trouble in relationships, we are facing problems with finances, or a loved one has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness.... where is God then? Has God shut the door of Heaven on us? Are we harboring some "secret sin" that we have to root out by confessing every sin and hoping that we confess the right one to root it out? We cry out to God, but it seems that He has forgotten us.

Granted some situations that we are in are due to our own bad decision-making. Ignoring counsel, not seeking counsel, repeating our patterns of sin, trusting a person that can't be trusted... or worse, combinations of these things can lead us into situations and we reap the painful consequences of those decisions. Sometimes they are not due to our sin...
Consider Job... he was a righteous man - and bad things happened to him.

When times are really tough for me, I find great comfort in the Book of Job and the Psalms, but thee are three verses that have helped me to hang on when times were tough for me.

1. Bad things can happen to People
But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips. (Job 2:10)
So good and bad things are all coming to us from the hand of a loving God. We can always hope for the good thing to come to us, but in reality, we will get bad things as well. We live in a creation that has been cursed (Rom 8:22). So in addition to the situations that we are in because of own doing, those senseless things will happen to us as well. Although we should not roll over and allow these thing to happen, we need to face the reality that yes, bad things will happen and yes, God is still with us through it all.

2. God measures out those bad things...

And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. (2Co 12:9) Three times Paul prayed that the thorn in his flesh would leave him (2Co 12:8), but God did not take it away. Prayer is powerful, but the will of God is more powerful. When your prayer comes against the sovereign will of God, He's gonna say "no" to us no matter how hard we ask. The word "sufficient" means "just enough."

God gives us just enough grace to carry us through whatever we are facing. If He gave us too much, we would not learn from the trial and we would not be able to help to others going through the same trial. Too little and we would be crushed under the trial. The God's love will prevent him from breaking the person under the burden (Isa 42:3), yet sometimes for us, it feels like there is no hope.

3. God works ALL things out for the good...

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. (Rom 8:28) It would be negligent not to mention that this verse does have a condition in that it only applies to people who love God and have been called according to His purpose. It would not be right to discuss the benefits of the verse without first discussing the condition that must be in place in order to obtain those benefits.

Whatever situation you are going though, God is working the things that seem overwhelming to us as well as the good thing - together for good. It's so hard for us to see the good of a trial we are going through because we are going through it and naturally lose sight. Sometimes it takes going though the situation and then after a period of time to look back and see how God's hand on us all the way through that situation. Some situations we need to be on the other side of eternity looking back to see how worked that out for the good.

But ALL things, good and bad will work together for the good... that's a precious promise that we can apply while we are going through that trial that just seems too much for us. When all seem s hopeless and we are facing the end, God will work that for the good. We might not know HOW God is going to do it, but all we really need to know is THAT God will do it.

So when we go through trials, we need to remember that bad things can and will happen to us, that God gives us the grace that we need to go through it and finally that God will work all things together for the good. :-)