You’re not stuck. If God has you in a place where your gifts are not fully utilized, or if you feel set aside in God’s grand plan, or if those around you have marginalized you, trivialized you, or flat-out rejected you, I understand how tough that is.
(Photo: Mount of Beatitudes hillside. Courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)
But you’re not stuck. God isn’t done with you.
The victorious Christian life is not a life without struggle or pain. (If so, Jesus missed it.) Remember that victory presupposes a battle.
Here’s how to keep going.
When You Can’t Keep Going
You may experience some days in life when you really, really don’t think you can hold out. Believe me, I’ve been there. Tough doesn’t begin to describe how it feels. Cruel is a better term.
Enduring a difficult situation seems impossible until you realize you only have to make it through the day. Then tomorrow, through that day. (Of course, this doesn’t apply to staying in an abusive situation.) Do this one day at a time, and you’ll wake up one day with the reality that you’ve endured a difficult situation for five, ten, even fifty years.
Some people call that ridiculous. Crazy. A waste of life.
God calls it perseverance.
Peter said it this way:
If when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. —1 Pet. 2:20
And when you realize endurance finds favor with God, it can bring peace and joy to any troubled situation.
Our limitations only frustrate us when we forget that in weakness we glorify God. For example, a husband or wife will surrender massive amounts of time to marriage and parenting, understanding that God is in no way limited by this limitation. Other desires are limited, for sure, but that may be precisely why God wanted us to get married and have kids.
How else would we face our selfishness unless we had to?
The Hope of Our Limitations
God experiences no limitation by our limitations. He needs no sleep, has to earn no living, nor does he have any shortage of time or space. We, on the other hand, have all of these confines—including our battle with our sinful nature.
Even on our best days, we offer God only scraps to work with—only fish and loaves that he somehow multiplies to make adequate.
So keep going. One more day. You’re not stuck like you may think you are.
God is at work.
Tell me what you think: What helps you keep going when you can’t keep going? To leave a comment, just click here.
Like This Post? Get the Whole Book!
This post is adapted from Wayne’s book, Waiting on God: What to Do When God Does Nothing.
• What do you do when the life God has promised you looks nothing like the life he has given you?
• If you find yourself waiting on God—or if you don’t know what God wants you to do next—this book offers a wise and practical guide to finding hope and peace in life’s difficult pauses.
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