When Life Happens

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lifePsalm 103:2 “Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits.”

Sometimes life gets in the way of life…

Have you ever experienced this? You’re moving along, full of faith, then you hit a pothole of disappointment. Your prayers get punctured by betrayal and loss, your joy runs headlong into a detour sign. You remain on the road, but what once filled your heart with hope and wonder has evolved into a foggy kind of skepticism. What happened?

Life….fallen-world life.

When fallen life interrupts our journey and intrudes on our peace, we get tempted to lock into human answers and explanations. We stop fixing our eyes on the Fixer and instead stare at our circumstances until they loom like giants. Similar to Israel in the wilderness, we walk in circles toward a Promised Land which seems more and more out of reach. Why? Because we forget his promises.

Promises like…

  • “His divine powerhas given us everything we need for a godly life” (2 Peter 1:3).
  • “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful;he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (1Corinthians 10:13).
  • “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”  (Romans 8:31-32).

The only thing that can steal our victory is forgetting we have it. Forgetting that our inability to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile, to show grace, to release expectations, is just that—our inability—not his. He has made victory possible in every area we face, but we must choose to access it.

The truth is, we don’t have to live like Jews wandering in the wilderness. We can invite God into every aspect of our lives and let him use even the potholes to move us forward. Because that’s the kind of God we serve. One whose benefits we best not forget.

2 Replies to “When Life Happens”

  1. Thank you so much for posting. You have answered a lot of questions the I know needed to be answered in my life. I had been feeling like I had been run over with a steam roller for some time. Maybe that is easy to do at going on 73, but now I have a direction and the hope of getting beyond it. Remembering to keep my trust in the Lord no matter how dark the night might seem, for His light is always shining, and His promises always kept. Again thank you so much.