My Thirty Day Faith Dare - Day Sixteen

A New Attitude – Dare to Choose Whom You Will Serve and the Direction You Will Take

1 Thessalonians 5:16 Be joyful always; pray continually.

Today’s Truth: Hebrews 12:1-2 – Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

The author today asks us to work through our pain, see it as something God has allowed for our good/growth. She tells us to “choose joy because God is working, and never look back because you cannot run the race while looking behind you.”

Today’s truth is speaking to me…
There have been times in my life when, in the midst of my deepest pain and heartbreak, I have been able to lift my tear-soaked face to God. And there have been times when I couldn’t even speak. I have to take a different view tonight – I think we have to approach this very carefully. I don’t think God asks us to be in fits of hysterical laughter in the middle of all the pain. I know my God allows me to scream “THIS HURTS AND I HATE IT”. I know that’s not sinful, and sometimes I think we run around gleefully quoting Romans 8:28 to other people who are hurting. It’s often trite and cruel, like putting a bandage on a full-blown heart transplant. Yes, it is sacred and true, but there is a time for it.

Sometimes we have to sit through the pain, sit with it, and just be. Not say anything, just be. Not to say that God isn’t with us in it. We need to acknowledge that there’s a reason He has allowed this, but I don’t think joy means just being some smiling zombie and stuffing what we’re feeling. I think the joy comes in a deep, quiet knowledge that you’re not alone in it, in the faith that while I hate it hate it, God is using it. It is a quietness, that words can’t really describe properly. It is washed in anguish, nights of tears and pain, but He sits with us in it. That is when it is so important to fix our eyes on Jesus.

God is asking me to…
Look at Him instead of the storm around me – like being in the middle of a twister… everything is spinning around you uncontrolled, but you must stand in the middle and just look up, where it is calm and you can see the Son.

My challenge is to…
Remember He’s doing something for me, and to be aware enough to look for His lessons, no matter how awful it seems at that moment. My challenge is to be real in it, and to allow others to see that I am suffering, but not destroyed, and to have them see that my faith in Jesus is the only thing that is keeping me together.