"In
You, O Lord, do I put my trust and seek refuge; let me never be put to shame or
disappointed; deliver me in Your righteousness" Psalm 31V1
More and
more people in this economy are struggling each day. People who have had jobs
for over ten years or more are being laid off. There is no real security in the
job market, period.
You hear
that on the news, and you read about it in the paper. It never really hits home,
however, until it happens to you, a family member or a close friend. Yesterday
a woman who has been my friend for several years sent me an email. She asked me
to agree with her in prayer. Out of the blue she was laid off from a job she
had been at for years. She never even saw it coming.
This
woman is a prayer warrior, a thither and a giver. She is the first to help out
and be there when you need someone to care. She said to me in her e-mail
"I just don't know how God could let this happen to me!"
I look
back on my life and I realize that I myself have said the same thing to God on
more then one occasion. I have had some mighty hard knocks since the time I
accepted Christ as my savior in July of 1976.
As a
young Christian I was naïve enough to believe that once I had accepted Christ
and turned my life around, things would be wonderful from that day forth. I
expected to never have another problem.
I thought of Jesus as some super-hero that would shield me from every
bad thing that satan would throw my way.
Well, I
was to find out that I too had hard times. I had things happen to me that made
no sense. After all, I reasoned that I was a good person; I followed the Ten
Commandments and obeyed the Lord. Sometimes I would fail, but then I was a work
in progress. I am still a work in progress. I was growing spiritually in those
early years. I became ever more intimate with Christ as the years rolled along.
I still
grappled with the "whys", many, many times. You know the "If you
love me God, WHY did you let this happen to me?" whys. In my early walk
with the Lord I got mad at Him sometimes. I would be kneeling on the floor in
tears and looking up towards the heaven, shake my fist at Him and say "I
thought you loved me God, what more do you want from me." Thank Goodness,
God doesn't hold a grudge. Several hours later I would be asking Him for His
forgiveness in prayer!
Through
the years, I have learned a lot about hard times. One of the most important
things I have learned is to be patient. I can be patient now because God has
brought me out of each and every situation victorious.
Patience
is important when you are in a dark valley. God will bring you out of your
situation in His timing not yours. That's a bitter pill to swallow but it's
true. He has a plan for each of our lives. We can't see it, but He can. You can
wring your hands, cry and fret as much as you want. God will move in your
situation when He is ready.
He will
move, and it's usually at the last hour. The bible says in Psalm 34:19
"Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivers Him out
of them all." I wish I would have learned that scripture sooner in my walk
with the Lord. It sustains me now through all sorts of situations. You see God never said that we wouldn't
have hard times. He does say that He will deliver us out of them all. In my
experience that is true.
Hard
times do not always mean that you have failed to do something right, or that
you are living in some sin. That's not what the Word says. That's why, when
troubles come its sometimes best to just keep them between you and God. He has
the answers, and He along can deliver you from your situation.
If you
lose your job, or have lost it, do the practical things. Leave the rest to God.
Immediately apply for unemployment. It isn't as much as you were making but it
will help while you look for something else. Buff up your resume. Look online
for jobs. There are several good sites. WWW.Monster.com is one that a lot of people find helpful.
When we
are having rough times our help won't always come from other Christians. Be
open to any person(s) God will use to help you. When the Israelites were leaving Egypt for the Promised Land
God told them to go to the homes of their slave masters and ask for jewels of
gold and silver. The bible says that the Lord gave them favor and the Egyptians
handed them what they asked for. These things were later used to build the
altars when the Israelites arrived in the Promised Land. The bible says "The
wealth of the wicked is laid apart for the Godly." Your help may come from
somewhere you least expect it to come from.
God is
going to use your situation for his advantage. What satan has meant to harm you
can be used to bring others to Christ. It's all about your attitude! People may
be looking at you now and thinking "This person is done for, they will
never make it out of this situation." That's because they don't know God.
You keep on praising Him in front of them. You keep on telling them "I
serve a mighty miracle-working God. He parted the Red Sea's and He is going to
part the Rea Sea's of this problem and let me walk across to
VICTORY!" When God does move
this will be a living testimony to the unbelievers around you of the power of
God.
It's not
easy, but you must try and live one minute, one hour and one day at a time.
Trust that God is on the scene. He loves you, you are His child, and He will
provide for you. Don't ever lose faith in the love of God for His children. If you need favor ask God for it. God
isn't limited by a recession or any other problem. He can and will give you
supernatural favor in your job hunt.
Sometimes
God leads us the hard way rather than the easy way? Why? So that He can do a
special work in us. How can we ever learn to lean on Him if everything in our
lives is always perfect? God lets us experience hard times, heartbreak and
discouragement so that we can help others when they go through the same things.
We may
think that once we are saved we should not have any more battles. Nothing is
further from the truth. The Israelites had some of their hardest battles AFTER
they went in to the Promised Land. They won those battles when they learned to
fight in God's strength..Not their own strength. We have to learn to trust in the
Lord and, as the scripture says, "He will direct our paths."
You will
have good days and you will have bad days. Expect it. The strongest Christians
among us have times of worry. You are not God; you are in a suit of flesh.
Don't be hard on yourself when you are down, just don't stay down. Pick
yourself up and look up to GOD.
Pray this
with me now "Father, I pray that you will help me not to fear my
circumstances, but to stand still and let You have them. Father, thank-you for
supplying all my needs, not according to my riches but Your riches in Glory!
Thank you Father that your angels are standing around me and my family as we
trust in You to deliver us from these hard circumstances."