Sometimes when we find ourselves struggling or fighting long, drawn-out personal battles, it’s difficult to have hope. How do we know God is still there with us?
A lot of times in the Christian life, we can tend to have unrealistic expectations. We may think to ourselves, “As long as I read my Bible, everything is going to be okay.” Other times we become discouraged when certain ideas or Christian “catch phrases” — things that sound nice but are not actually biblical — don’t turn out the way we expect them to in our own lives. We find out the hard way that’s not really how it works.
Life is full of trials and struggles. In those times, it can be tempting to ask, “What am I supposed to do? I read the Bible and prayed, but it didn’t work. Nothing is helping.”
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It’s not that reading your Bible and praying doesn’t work. It’s that God is working beyond what we can see right in front of us. In his book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis says that Satan’s plan “is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do [the Lord’s] will, looks ‘round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
It is as we walk out our faith through our spiritual disciplines, regardless of our emotions in the moment, that we will learn to see God at work.
We don’t always realize it, but in the same way that our body’s immune system rebuilds itself when we sleep, God also works in our life when we are not paying attention. When we fail, we may get super discouraged and throw up our hands to the Lord, saying, “God, I don’t know what to do.” Then two or three months down the road, we find ourselves experiencing a similar situation and realize that we responded differently — we responded correctly. We say, “How did that happen?”
God is always at work in every part of our lives — not only when we’re feeling full of faith and hope. He is at work both while we fast and pray as well as when we perform normal, everyday tasks at work or around the house. He is at work when we are discouraged and when we step outside at night, looking at the stars in awe. As we awake, intentionally commit our day to Him and ask again for His grace as we go to sleep, He is continuously at work in us, not limited by our personal devotion time or by Sunday mornings. That is the Christian life: trusting God at all times, no matter how good or bad things are.
Think about the Apostle Paul. At the end of his life, one of the greatest heroes in the history of the Church, said he was the chief of sinners and worried he might lose it all. But even so, Paul had confidence in the incredible mercy of God.
Some practical things we can do to stay close to Jesus is say the Lord’s Prayer every day, to focus your heart on the sovereignty of God, and the Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”) whenever your heart and mind get distracted. You may not notice it immediately, but by incorporating these small habits into your life, you’re renewing and transforming your thoughts and actions to be oriented on Christ.
Perhaps you’re not discouraged right now, but someone else in your life is. Well, the early Church Fathers told us that when we are with other people who are failing and struggling, we also should be like Christ, carrying one another’s burdens. We are supposed to pray for one another; we are supposed to have faith for one another. When a person has no faith, we can have faith for them.
In Luke chapter 5, there’s the story of the group of men who lowered a lame man down through the roof of a house. When Jesus saw the faith of the lame man’s friends, He told the man, “Your sins are forgiven.” It isn’t even the lame man’s faith that is mentioned! Scripture says, “When He saw their faith.” A few verses later, you’ll read that He healed the man as well.
When you see others failing or struggling repeatedly, don’t write them off, thinking to yourself, “I’ve already told them hundreds of times what they need to do.” Remember, God has already corrected us a thousand times, too. Instead, pray for them, fast for them, encourage them, stick with them. Each of us will fail and try again and again throughout our lifetime. And the Good Shepherd still runs after us and brings us back because He loves us. He says to us over and over again, “Let me help you.”
When we walk in humility with others — when we pray for them, embrace them, trust God for them and encourage them to not give up — that is just a little bit of what it means to love one another.
If God doesn’t give up on us, let us ask God to help us not to lose heart and give up on others, or even on ourselves.
Bishop Daniel Timotheos Yohannan is the President of GFA World and is consecrated bishop of the Believers Eastern Church. In his role as president of GFA World, Bishop Daniel serves as a primary link between thousands of Christian workers and missionaries serving throughout Asia and Africa and the rest of the church worldwide.
