On Sunday mornings, I am preaching some messages entitled, "What to Do When Life is Hard". Some of this comes from years of talking with people who were experiencing very difficult times. Some of this comes from my own difficult moments. One thing is for sure, life is often very hard.
- Life is sometimes hard for the child, the teenager, the university student, the single, the young married couple, the middle-age woman or man, the older couple.
- Life can be so hard due to health difficulties.
- Life can be hard due to financial struggles.
- Life can be tough because of loneliness. For a child, it might be something so upsetting as the fear of sitting at lunch alone. For an adult, it might be something like being in the apartment alone on a holiday.
- Life can be difficult due to disappointment. You can’t believe that one of your children would do something so wrong. You can’t believe one of your friends would flaunt their sin in front of you.
Now, a few suggestions:
1. Remember that when life is tough, we will feel pain (on some level). Sometimes we really try to put a positive spin on whatever we are dealing with instead of just admitting that we are afraid and and experiencing pain.
2. Please don’t try to be strong. I know that we would like to maintain control, handle it well, and in some go through this in a way that we think we ought. Yet, there is only one who is strong and that is the Lord himself.
3. Find someone who you will be honest (really honest) with. We are not going to open our lives to the grace of God until we can confess just how badly we need his grace. Our pretending is nothing more than our efforts to maintain control. When we try to maintain control, we are basically saying that we do not trust God at that level.
Life is sometimes very hard.
God is always very good.
He loves me no less when I am weak than when I am strong.
Doesn’t that free me up to be weak in the face of pain?
Afterall, God is the only one who is strong.