Finding the Joy in the trials and the Light INSIDE Your Tunnel!
I pray you are finding blessings in my vlog series so far! Here is part five of 20 Steps to Finding Joy in the Trials. This one is a wee bit longer, but it is well worth the time. Enjoy!
I’ll see ya next week with part six! If you haven’t viewed the intro or any of parts 1-4, just go up to the Blog tab and scroll down to view any you missed.
Blessings!
Here’s part three of my vlog series: 20 Steps for Finding Joy in the Trial! If you haven’t yet seen the intro and parts one and two, you can click the links or just scroll further down.
I pray this series is a blessing to those of you going through trials. Please feel free to share a bit, ask for prayer, or comment. 😀
Hi Survivors! I have a TON of great info I recorded for the Facebook group I had going, but they are very long videos. I wanted to make them available to everyone who could use a way to find the joy in their own struggles, but the videos are very long. The first webinar, 20 Steps to Finding Joy in the Trials was almost an hour long!
So, I chopped it up into bite-sized pieces that are more easily digested and internalized. Here is the introduction:
The way this will work is: I will be releasing one video with one step to joy each week here on the blog. So, make sure you come back or subscribe to the blog!
I pray each of these is a blessing in your life!
JoJo
Now that we understand that finding our joy means praising God in the storm and that requires baby steps at first (and periodically by the way when things get difficult as they tend to do), we need to also begin to think about blessings we may not have ever even noticed. We can get so caught up in what has happened, should have happened, shouldn’t have happened, and might happen in the future, that we often forget to notice all the times in our lives we should be grateful for all the things great and small that God has done behind the scenes that we never even realized or thought much about. Doing so can help us to see even more blessings and feel God near when struggles take over our thoughts and feelings bringing a cloud of despair over us.
2. Blessings for worst not happening
In the midst of terrible pain, it’s often hard to see what could be worse and, to be honest, we don’t often care. We just know where we are now is bad. However, looking at the bright side can truly make a person thankful because, believe it or not, there are so many situations where we could be worse off.
Food prices up? Praise God that you have the money to buy them. Health bad? Praise God that you have the time to rest. Sick? As you pray for healing be thankful it isn’t fatal. Serious illness? Be thankful that there is still hope. And if a loved one has passed away, praise God he is no longer suffering and is with Jesus in heaven.
Now, these things may sound easy to some, but they are not at all easy to do when you are in the middle of a struggle especially when that struggle has already taken a toll on you for many years. However, if you start small, are consistent and build, your faith will increase, your sorrow will lift and your joy will return even if you aren’t happy about your circumstances.
In the midst of despair, sadness and being overwhelmed with struggle, we may find it difficult to just pick ourselves up by our Christian bootstraps and just “be happy.” However, these little things have helped me get just one step closer to being thankful and have reminded me that God is there with me and He’s working on my behalf even if I can’t feel Him through all that life throws at me. I pray they are blessings to you and you can begin to see how you can be thankful and praise God during your struggles as well.
So, do you remember a time when you had a near miss car accident? A “lucky event” when things could have been so much worse? Was there a time in your life when things went very well and you didn’t think about how incredible they were and remember to thank God for these “coincidences” that brought them to you? I sure do!
When we lived in Southern California, we used to drive six hours to visit my folks in ARIDzona. On one such trip out, we noticed that our brakes started squeaking. By the time we arrived, they were squeaking kind of loudly, but all the men in the family (with a collective 100 yrs of automotive experience) thought we were safe to drive home and have it taken care of after that weekend. Well, they were all wrong!
We were driving back on a holiday weekend when traffic was horrendous! It was stop and go (mostly stop) all the way and took us several hours longer than it usually did. Halfway or so in, the brakes were soooo loud, but they felt fine and so we just kept going. At night, what much else was there to do? With each time my husband hit the brakes, the sound got louder, the brakes got touchier, and we got more frightened with our young kids in the back of the car. As we pulled into the driveway of our home, the brakes finally gave out as we coasted into our garage in total safety.
There are many such stories I could recount to you of horrifying things that never happened because God had His hand upon us. But there are countless other times I may never even noticed when God sent us on a small journey so as to avoid a major traffic wreck or some other such horrific event we never even heard about much less reflected upon.
My point is, not only should we be grateful to the Lord for glaringly obvious mishaps we were spared, but also for all the little coincidences orchestrated by Him in order to so completely avoid tragedy that we never even knew it.
What can you think of that could have been worse, but for the grace of God was not?
So ends the Paul vs Job series here on Life Beyond Surviving, but I didn’t want to let you go without giving you some more “joy” resources. You see, I’ve been writing about this topic for quite some time. I started over on my JoJoisms blogsite. I’ve been transferring my most popular articles over to this site, but I’ve written so much that it’s not easy. It takes quite a bit of time so I’ve been doing them in bunches as these topics arise.
After this series, I thought about how a few of my other articles might be of some value to you. That being said, here are two articles I’ve written, a bit of what they say with links to the full articles here on Life Beyond Surviving.
1) How to Praise God in the Storm:
There are many devotionals on thankfulness that talk about this so I’m not going to spend much time on it since you’ve probably read enough of them to quote them verbatim. I’ll just say that it’s important to continue to pray and read the scriptures even when we are at our wit’s end and even when we are no longer able to envision that God would help us because, the moment we no longer seek God, we begin to drift away from Him. “Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me: yet thy commandments are my delights.” -Psalm 119:143
So how do we begin to feel thankful? Well, last week I prepared our hearts a bit by sharing with you what we should remember about struggles. But that often isn’t enough to bring us through from frustration and despair. After many years upon this earth I have found some things that have helped me to become more thankful and bring me to the point where I can praise God during the storms of my life. By the way…I wrote this as much for me as I did for my readers.
1. Start small and build
Thank Him for whatever blessings you can think of, even…
Click the above link to read the rest of the article.
2) What to Remember About Struggles:
Sometimes things that friends and family communicate to us can make our struggles more difficult, but there are things we can communicate to ourselves that can help us during struggles. Today I’d like us to consider some things that will help us remember that God is not out to get us when struggles come. God isn’t punishing us and that there is a reason and maybe even a blessing around the corner.
Here’s what we need to remember during hard times:
1. Even if we cannot feel Him, God is still with us
We can count on Him to help and support us through the difficult times. Often we feel abandoned by God when tough times come. It’s only natural that we may not feel close to God when we are struggling, but if we can remind ourselves that God has not moved away from us, we might feel Him near. It’s always harder to find something when we aren’t looking.
It’s almost like when you have a close relative who lives far away. You can’t reach out and touch them or hug them, but you can still talk to them on the phone, but only if we dial the phone.
2. This struggle may prepare us for an incredible opportunity
We may need to learn something from this horrible experience…
Click the above link to read the rest of the article.
I pray the Paul vs Job series has blessed you and your family and that these additional resources give you more to help you begin to work toward having more joy in your life despite the trails.
This is the last part in my series Paul vs Job. Just to recap, in this series, I’ve shared about the reason I began looking into this topic of Paul vs Job–-about how I could never find a devotional that went beyond the fact that we should be joyous and have faith and that we’d be healed in Heaven. I also shared about the differences between Job and Paul. I shared the lessons we can learn from Job and the lessons we can learn from Paul. I talked about how there are differences between struggling through short term trials and ones that are long term. Next I talked about what the Bible says about suffering and what the Bible says about joy in suffering. Then, I talked about the needs of the suffering and things I feel it’s important to keep in mind.
I’ve known for years that the Bible, and Paul specifically, tells us to have joy even in the midst of trials, but whenever I’d look for how to do that, all devotionals and articles came up short. They always told me what to do, but never HOW I could do that. There were times when I was in so much physical pain or emotional turmoil that I couldn’t even envision how that could be accomplished. And there were times when I have been easily able to move to joy from fear and pain because of all I’d seen in my life and all God had done for me. Yet, I still didn’t understand how Paul was able to have the joy he apparently had even in the midst of pain, enormous struggle, and persecution.
Frankly, I’d searched so long and so hard, I never thought I’d understand. I spoke to pastors and faith-filled friends who all told me to write about this, but I never felt qualified to do so…until recently. A friend told me to share what I HAD discovered even if it didn’t lead to how Paul was able to have such joy. So I embarked on this series. While, I prayed it would be a blessing to those in pain, struggling with trials of various kinds, I fully expected to come to this point in the series and tell you I had no idea how Paul was able to do this.
Then a miracle happened. I was reading over some articles and devotionals preparing for this blog post when it hit me that there wasn’t a single thing Paul did that helped him to feel joy. It wasn’t what he did; it was who he was. I believe there are nine things Paul was, or tried hard to be, that allowed him to live with joy:
1) An expectation and an acceptance that life wasn’t going to be easy.
Back in the olden days, I think there was an expectation and an acceptance that life was not a peaceful progression of years. With the advancement of medical science and technology, we have now come to expect that these things will make our lives easier. But more than this, we’ve come to the point where we do not accept life’s little struggles–let alone the big ones. As a result, it’s harder for people to deal with those struggles when they arise. The Bible tells us we will face trials of various kinds. Paul knew this. We should too.
2) A determination, a commitment, and a resilience.
Paul felt a strong calling on his life from the Lord to do certain things. That gives a person a determination and a commitment to that end. Determination and commitment leads to a resilience. We need to adopt those characteristics in our own lives to get us through the rough patches. Even if you look at this in a secular situation, have you ever heard of someone who accomplished great things in their lives, had great success, without having to struggle? No, you didn’t.
3) A constant reminder of how much Christ endured for us.
Paul was able to endure, I feel, because he was always aware of how much more Christ had endured for us. Whatever we have gone through, though devastating, was nothing compared to all Christ had lived through for our sake. I know that He was more than man and we are merely mortal, but having this in mind can help us to move past many things.
4) An understanding that while he may be in chains, his ministry was not.
Paul understood that while he had physical limitations of health or imprisonment, his ministry wasn’t bound. He was able to lead others to Christ through others, through his letters to the churches, etc. My ministry is not reliant upon my physical prowess (thankfully!) or my physical location (thanks to the internet). While my body may be limited, my ministry is not if I only think a bit outside the box. What about yours?
5) A heart to find the blessings due to his pain.
Paul’s heart was for others and he saw the blessings in those he discipled. He saw the blessings that God helped him to accomplish. He saw the beauty in God’s creations. We can do the same. If we look for the blessings in spite of (and sometimes BECAUSE of) our pain, we will have an easier time moving forward past the hardships.
6) A satisfaction with who he was if not how he was.
I think Paul was never satisfied with where he was or what he’d been able to do, but he was satisfied with who he was in Christ. We may not be satisfied with where we are (in struggle/chronic illness), but we may be satisfied with who we are in Christ because we are His and we are doing our best to fulfill our missions here on earth. That right there goes a long way to keeping us on track and fulfilled which makes trials less likely to derail our spirit.
7) A thankful heart for what he had been able to accomplish.
Paul had a thankful heart for all God did for him, a sinner, and for what he was able to accomplish in Christ. He was humble enough to know it was God’s victories and that, I think, made him thankful to be part of something bigger and more important than himself. Thankfulness makes us more positive about our future. Thankfulness can help us see outside ourselves and current difficulties toward something larger and more important for us to accomplish. Even if you are bedridden, there are ways the Lord can use you! What do you think they are? How can you be thankful to God for things in your life?
8) A flexibility to bypass roadblocks.
Part of number four up there requires flexibility. When life put up roadblocks for Paul, he found ways around them in order to further his ministry. Life has thrown roadblocks in your way too. How can you get around them? I know someone who is in a lot of pain and takes to her bed often for days, but she has a ministry online that gives her purpose. Instead of thinking she can’t be of any use, she found a way around her roadblocks to fulfill her ministry. How can you?
9) A heart to seek God for strength and direction.
Paul had a heart to seek after God. He found strength in Him and he asked for direction. We can too. We can ask God to reveal our purpose, to give us strength, to direct our steps, to fulfill our calling, to get through our struggles, and to find our joy! Will you?
I wish I could say I could wave a magic wand or you could take a pill and just suddenly experience joy amidst the difficult and sometimes horrific trials. There is no easy way to find joy. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe we need to struggle in order to create something beautiful in this life. Maybe it’s the struggle that defines us and pushes us mere humans to do something incredible with God’s help. Maybe the only real peace we will find is on the other side, in heaven…
I may not have all the answers to how Paul was able to find the joy in the midst of such trial. I may know nothing about what it will mean for you, but I do pray this post has been a starting point, food for thought, that will lead you to become the person you need to be in order to find your joy.
So last week we looked at the lessons we can learn from Job about being in trial. This week, I’m sharing the lessons I feel we can learn from Paul.
1. Bad things happen even when you’re doing God’s will:
I heard some say that bad things happen to those who are doing evil, but this is a fallen world, so bad things can happen to anyone. The Bible talks about how the you can be persecuted for your faith. Paul was one who was. He was put in jail at least twice. But Paul also talked of having some kind of medical problem he called a thorn in his side that he prayed would be removed. God didn’t heal Paul, but instead said, “My grace is sufficient for you.” Bad things happen even when we are doing God’s will for our lives. Bad things also happen in the secular world even when we follow the rules. Once my dh was fired even though he was doing a fabulous job for the owner of the company. The owner just didn’t like that my dh was Mexican. It caused our family severe financial hardship for a few years and we are not totally out of the woods yet, though God has always made a way for us and things are looking up financially.
2. There is always purpose to your life:
Paul had a purpose to (a calling on) his life that kept him busy even though he struggled with various trials. I believe each one of us also has a purpose to or a calling on our lives. And that purpose can get us through the struggles if our focus is on that purpose more than it is on our struggles. Hard to do at times, but well worth it.
3. God sets NO limits on some of our trials:
Job’s trails were allowed to continue for a limited time. Some of our trials may be more like Paul’s that last until the Lord calls us home. I’ve had some of my chronic illnesses since I was a teen. Others have been added unto me in my 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s and I don’t expect they will leave me this side of heaven. Like Paul, I’ve had to deal with them for decades. You may have had to deal with your trial(s) for a lifetime. God does’t promise He will always heal, but He does promise to be there with us to see us through.
4. Paul shows us three qualities that are good to develop in life:
Paul was patient, persistent, and courageous. Those are three things that we would do well to develop because they are the three qualities I have found that help you get through a trial. Struggles are so much more difficult when we are not patient to wait on the Lord’s timing.
We can often feel as if we should be healed or this crisis should have been over sooner, but the Lord may want to use the struggle we are in for a greater good. If we are patient, we don’t fight against what is happening, but rather go with the flow and thus have less inner struggle to deal with while in trial.
Trials can often overwhelm us to the point where want to give up, but Paul shows us that persistence pays off in the end. We can do so much more if we keep going, keep doing what we can and know to be right. Not that we won’t have thoughts of giving up, but that they will be momentary and allow us to keep moving forward.
Courage is what it takes to get through trials and struggles and Paul is a great example for us to follow-especially if those trials are long lived.
5. Paul was focused on God’s calling in his life.
Paul spent most of his time and energy on his calling. He was laser focused on evangelism and ministry. I believe this is THE most important thing we can learn from Paul about trials. The more you struggle, the easier it is to be distracted from our purpose or calling. That’s how Satan works. He distracts us from doing God’s will by throwing a monkey wrench into our plans. One of those wrenches might have chronic illness on it and another might have financial troubles or neighbor problems… The more laser focused we can be on our mission, the less focused we are on our problems and the smaller they will seem.
6. How to be content in any situation
In Philippians 4:11-13, Paul writes, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in an and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all things through him who gives me strength.”
Paul’s contentment seems to come from strength he found in God. His patience, persistence, and courage came from having faith and relying on the Lord for everything. He had faith that God knew what was best and that His timing was perfect. That acceptance, I believe, allowed Paul not to fight against his circumstances and just plow through the tasks he was charged with.
7. Paul was eternity focused not self focused
Finally, I believe that Paul’s contentment and joy in the Lord despite trials was easier because he was focused on the bigger picture. If you’ve ever had a baby, especially without benefit of pain meds, you know that probably the only reason you were able to get through that as well as you did was because you were focused on the precious child you were about to be blessed with. Pain of that caliber is too great to endure without meds without some goal in mind.
Paul was focused on eternity with Jesus much more than on the issues he faced day to day. In my own experience, I find that I can get through the irritating, frustrating, painful, and tiring overwhelm much better if I keep my eye on the prize: the mission He gave me, eternity in heaven.
