Bishop Daniel Timotheos, President of GFA World
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.”
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.
I feel like I am being faithful to keep doing the things I know I should do to stay close to Jesus, but I still don’t see a difference in my life. What else can I do?
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, look at the stars in awe and say, “Wow, praise God for that!” 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 it: At the end of his life, the Apostle Paul—one of the greatest people 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 things we can practically 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.
How can we be an extension of Christ to the people around us whom God has placed in our lives, especially to those who are struggling and discouraged?
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, you read about a 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! It says, “When He saw their faith.” A few verses later, you read that He healed the man also.
When you see others failing or struggling, don’t just write them off or say in your heart, “I’ve already told them 400 times.” Remember, God has already told us 5,000 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 still He—the Shepherd—runs after us and brings us back because He loves us. He says, “Let me help you.”
The mid-sixteenth century martyr John Bradford is remembered for looking upon a group of condemned prisoners and wisely observing, “There but for the grace of God go I.” His statement was based on the Apostle Paul’s comment in 1 Corinthians 15:8–10.
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.