When Your Faith is Tested

Faith. That’s a powerful word. This is what connects our relationship to God. 

Faith is a great word to talk about. Even better to sing it loudly in a praise and worship song in church.

It is different when faith and fear meet.

It’s what I call the scared place. When you have that scared feeling when your faith is tested.

I’m in that scared place right now. While I have faith God will answer my prayers, I’m scared because I don’t know how this will turn out. God has a plan that He doesn’t always share with us. It’s a scary place because we don’t know.

I don’t like being in this place but whether I like it or not, I am here. Trusting God isn’t always easy. Sometimes He gives us things that are painful to bear. I don’t like the painful part.

Is my faith strong enough? I can’t say for sure but I won’t give up easily. I will fight as long as I have fight in me.

As I face this test to my faith, I keep reminding myself that I can only do this one step at a time. I only need strength for today and when I wake up tomorrow I will start again.

Having faith doesn’t mean it won’t be a struggle or that I won’t shed some tears along the way. It’s going to hurt but I have to push though it.

When It Happens To You

It’s different when it happens to you.

Being a believer is exciting and fun until something happens to you. Your faith is tested and suddenly the world isn’t filled with praise and worship choruses. All of the preaching, quoting Bible verses and claiming things in Jesus’ name doesn’t mean much when you are going through some of the hard things in life.

Life will throw you. You can’t always plan for it either. It will come at you whether you are ready for it or not.

I remember many years ago when I was stationed at Dyess Air Force Base near Abilene, Texas I was attending a small church near the base. Tragically one of the teens in the youth group was killed in a freak car accident. It was devastating. When I later went to the family house, I sat next to the mother and wanted to be a help. I made the mistake of saying “I know what you are going through” with which she came back with “You have NO idea what I’m going through!” and left the room.

I learned a value lesson. We don’t always know what someone is going through until we go through it ourselves. Words rarely do any good to ease the pain.

The super religious people will act like nothing bothers them. They have their hands in praying position and always looking to the sky while the rest of us mortals absorb the realities of living in a fallen and imperfect world.

Being a believer doesn’t mean we are immune to hurt and pain. We still shed tears when we are hurting and - yes - we also question God. He doesn’t always share with us what He is doing. He doesn’t have to. As for me, I like answers! I want to know why! God does what He does and never obligated to answer to me.

Where is God in this?

That’s a common thought. He allows things to happen and we just don’t understand why. It’s not so easy to have faith then. It is in these times when our faith is truly tested. Having faith and enduring pain doesn’t mean we will go through it with a smile nor doesn’t it mean we won’t go through it without being battered by it.

The only way to get through it is to go through it. There aren’t always shortcuts. We can’t avoid feeling pain. When we walk through the storms of life, we will feel it but we have to keep going.

If you know I am a believer and ask me “where is your God now?” I can only tell you that I don’t really know. I know He promised not to leave me or forsake me but I certainly can’t tell you how or why. You can’t have faith until it is tested.

Life happens to us all. Don’t look at me. I don’t have it all figured out. Just doing the best that I can and putting one foot ahead of the other.

Thoughts About Waiting

One of the hardest things to do in life is wait. 

As that famous philosopher Tom Petty used to sing, “The waiting is the hardest part.”

We don’t like to wait. We want it now!

Some of the difficult times of waiting is when we have medical issues and the doctor is running tests to determine what the problem is. We get anxious and obviously assuming the worst case scenario. Not knowing tests our strength. We want to know!

Unfortunately many times we simply have to wait. Waiting can be minutes, hours, days or even years. I want waiting to be the shortest time possible.

I think you would agree that it is hard to be strong when we are waiting. I know that I am not good at it.

Sometimes things just take time. We don’t want to hear that. We want answers.

During the times of waiting, we need to develop the right mindset. We have to ground ourselves in the present. Developing the right mindset will help reduce frustration over the uncontrollable delays we encounter in our lives.

Waiting happens. That’s just the reality of life. We have to get better at waiting and develop habits to help us endure the times of waiting. Some rely on their faith - like I do - but it may be different things for others. Whatever it is, strengthen your mind to get you through it.