God Cares

{1 Peter 5:6-7; NLT}

So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

There are times in our lives when we are convinced that no one is able to understand what we are going through. Even when we know that other people have been through a similar circumstances we tell ourselves that what we went through is so much worse.

What happens in these circumstances is that we have our focus in the wrong place. Our focus is all on us and what we are feeling, which then leads us to get so consumed with our feelings that we lose sight of everything else. It becomes a vicious cycle that will guarantee that we will continue to feel worse and worse and more and more isolated until something is able to come in and break it.

That is why Peter’s command in 1 Peter 5:6 is so vitally important. Humility helps us put things in their proper perspective, which allows us to deal with them more effectively. It also allows us to open our eyes to see what is happening to other people, which will allow us to realize that many people are worse of than we are. Finally, humility helps us to remember that God is still on His throne working out His plan to bless the entire world through Christ Jesus, which allows us to remember that we are just playing a small part in a bigger story.

If we continue to look at what Peter wrote in 1 Peter 5:6 he goes on to say that at the right time he will lift you up in honor. God does not intend for you to stay in the depths of hardship, misery, and tragedy which should add comfort to our lives, for nothing lasts forever, not even our pain.

Yet it is in these depths that God molds us into the people He created us to be. Much like the refining process which requires heat and fire, the hardships of life help refine our character and faith. As painful as these time are God is able to use them for our good. God loves us so much that He will not waste the pain we experience in our lives, but He will use it to make us more like His Son Jesus.

I want you to stop and ponder this thought for a moment. God doesn’t waste the hardships of our lives! What a wonderful thought to remember! He will use this awful experiences for our good. When Peter says that God will exalt us, he is implying two very important realities: the hardships of life are useful in our character development and they will not go on forever.

While hardships are necessary and God uses them to bring change to our lives, that does not mean that He is indifferent to our fear, pain, and suffering. God loves you! The fact that God experienced the pain of death of His Son Jesus reminds us that God knows what pain is and that He is willing to do whatever it takes to rescue us from this world of sin and death. That is why Peter, who knew about pain and tragedy, is able to write that God cares about us. What a wonderful promise this is, and one that we often forget.

Since God cares for us that means that He is not bothered by the hardships and pain in our lives, even if think they are insignificant. God wants us to come to Him with everything on our hearts and to ask for His help and guidance. That doesn’t mean that He will make everything better, but it will mean that He will give us the strength and wisdom to get through the situation.

James tells us:

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking (James 1:2-5; NLT).

The only way we can look at life’s troubles with joy is if we have God’s wisdom to guide us. It is also the only way we will be able to understand that God cares about us when we are in the middle of a tragedy. God loves us and when we go to Him in prayer He will give us what we need to get through whatever we are experiencing.

God desires that we experience life, but the problem is that in order to experience life we have to be changed. Change, as we know, often requires hardship and difficulty, which is never easy. It is in moments like those that we have to hold on to the promise that God cares about us and turn to Him for help. I believe that if we turn to God in the moment of crisis He will provide the encouragement and the strength we need to get through to the other side. Why do I believe this? I believe it because God cares about what happens to us.

Be Humble and See God at Work

Originally posted on Saturday, September 18, 2004

The circumstances of life have a way of reminding us that the life we are living is not the life we wanted. Too often we find ourselves in positions and situations in which we had no desire to be. Divorce is never part of our plan for a happy life nor is being stuck in a job which you hate. Being broken hearted and feeling insignificant is not what we hoped for in our lives.

No matter who you are or the life you have lived I would bet that you have been broken hearted or wondered about the significance of your life. Situations and circumstances in your life make you wonder what life is all about. You even question whether or not God exists, and perhaps you come to the conclusion that a loving God would not let His people experience these painful circumstances.

When things don’t go the way we planned it is important to remember what Ravi Zacharias wrote in Cries of the Heart; “Only as we remember and remind ourselves of God’s faithfulness can we even see the pattern God has woven in our lives and learn confidence in His working.” God is working in our lives, even when our lives don’t turned out as planned.

My heart is broken. I want the pain to go away so I can get back to living life, yet the broken dream continues to haunt me. Living alone is a constant reminder of the loneliness I am experiencing in my heart, and it becomes easy for me to question God’s faithfulness and wonder about His purpose in my life. Yet, it is at times like this that I am drawn to God’s Word.

I believe when we focus on situations and circumstances we lose sight of how God has worked through our lives. All we see is the present and the selective images from the past which we use to justify the way we feel. We totally miss the bigger picture; and how God has been working through our lives to prepare us for the life He has created us to live. It is easy to forget God’s faithfulness when we focus on our current circumstances.

The apostle Peter wrote; So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and in his good time he will honor you. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you (1 Peter 5:6, 7; NLT).

Humility is the key to seeing God’s hand at work in our lives. When we are humble we are able to remember that life isn’t about us, but it is about God’s Kingdom. We are then able to understand that happiness is found, not in our dreams coming true, but in our seeking His Kingdom.

Though it is hard to believe God cares for us when our hearts are broken, it is important that we don’t allow ourselves to be swept away by our emotions. For that to happen we have to be grounded in reality, and that takes going back to the Bible. In Scripture we discover that the best life we can have is found in the Kingdom. We also discover that God allows bad things to happen to us so that we will let go of our desires for the things of this world and set our hearts on Him and His Kingdom. We can trust that God will get us through the terrible times of life, because the Bible tells us that He cares about what happens to us.

Life won’t turn out like we dreamed it would, and that is okay. Through the pain and struggles of our lives God draws us close to Him. When we humble ourselves we begin to see God’s hand at work all through our lives. He will continue to reach out to us, for He cares about us. God wants us to live the life He created us to live, and that is the best possible life that we could live.

Even the Bad

{James 1:2-4; NLT}

Dear brothers and sisters, whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy. For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything.

Spiritual growth is not easy. It requires more than reading books, singing songs, listening to sermons, and giving a few dollars. Spiritual growth is the result of following Jesus. We follow Jesus by applying God’s truth to our lives.

We can be certain that along this path of spiritual growth Satan, our great enemy, will throw many different obstacles along the way to trip us up. He throws out fear, and we hold ourselves back from going into the unknown with Jesus. Satan sits the trap of temptation and we miss out of the experiences God has planned for us as we pursue the pleasures of sin. He digs the hole of guilt and we fall in overwhelmed with the evil we have committed, and forgetting to rely on God’s grace and forgiveness.

The good news is that God even uses Satan’s obstacles as opportunities to make us better people. Just as Joseph told his brothers; "As far as I am concerned, God turned into good what you meant for evil" (Genesis 50:20; NLT), we can recognize the good that can come out of our failures. God is so powerful that He can even turn evil into good!

If we are going to become productive citizens of God’s Kingdom it is going to require us to apply the truth we have been taught. God’s Word does us no good if all we do with it is listen to it. Ultimately we have to start applying it to how we live our lives. What many of us Christ Followers need is not another book to read or class to attend, but to simply do the good we have already been taught. Spiritual maturity is the process that happens as we live by faith, regardless of the consequences that we may have to face.

What makes trusting God difficult, is when bad things come our way. We have this belief that if we are living the way God wants us to, if we have applied His truth to our lives, then our lives should be filled with God. How can we trust God when we allows such bad things to happen to us? It is during these times that we have to remember that God is able to turn our pains into something that is beneficial to us. Goal of God is not to make us happy, but to make us holy, and be holy experience the life He wants us to live.

In the passage quoted above James says that we should approach trials with joy, because we know God uses them to produce in us the character He desires to have. Because God loves us He will not waste our painful experiences, our failures, or our troubles. He will use them to make us stronger, and in many cases, He will use them for the benefit of others as well.

When trials, troubles, and failures come our way shouldn’t get discouraged and wonder where God is in the tragedies of life. Rather we should respond with trust, knowing that even through the most horrible of circumstances God can bring about His will and create us to be a little more like Jesus.

• Point to Ponder: God uses even the bad in our lives to make us more like Jesus.
  
• Questions to Consider: How has God used your pain in the past to develop your character? Why do you think we question God when hardships come our way?
• Prayer to Pray: Lord, thank You for loving me and caring about the type of life I live. Give me eyes to see You at work in the world around me, and a heart of hope so that I will hold on when the storms of life come my way...