If You're Stuck in a Hard, Long Season and Sick of Waiting

A little conversation on walking through deserts in life (and how to keep trusting God through uncertainty, struggle, and setbacks).
If you're disappointed or frustrated with how life has been going, this is for you.

Warrior Chicks

Holly Wagner talks about her book "Warrior Chicks" in this video. Warrior Chicks is a book about rising strong in the midst of the struggles that come with life. Holly Wagner has faced quite a few personal challenges over the last few years. Holly has battled breast cancer, identity theft, personal betrayals and her husband having a life-threatening disease. How can we find the strength to rise strong in the midst of the chaos that we often find ourselves in during our lives?

Adopting siblings

I love listening to people's adoption stories because it's so nice to get to see the happy ending to every journey. Every adoption journey is a great love story. Every adoption includes pain and hardship, sometimes it's from an unplanned pregnancy, or parents who are addicted to drugs, have mental problems or are financially not able to take care of a child. Every child that needs a new home has gone through hardship. The adoptive parents have also gone through their struggles, many times they have struggled with infertility for years. Every time a new family is created through adoption it brings hope and healing and something beautiful can come out of all the pain in the end. Love has conquered over darkness.


This video tells the story of how three boys who had lived in many foster care homes finally got their forever family and a place to call home. Veronica became the adoptive mom of three boys and her biological son Styles was finally able to have brothers, which he had always dreamt about.

When marriage becomes difficult

Ernesto and Melisa share their story about some of the struggles they have endured in their lives and marriage. We often come into marriage with a lot of selfishness and when we end up with unmet needs it leads to anger and frustration. Ernesto and Melisa quickly went from being in love to fighting almost every day. Hear them share their story of how they eventually found healing for their marriage.

Hold It Down

It's an awesome feeling you get once you have finally figured out your purpose in life. You now live life with a whole new passion and energy, but what happens when you run into some really big obstacles on your journey? It's one thing to find the purpose for your life and it's another to actually finish what you've started. How do you manage to keep your faith when you run into disappointment after disappointment or failure after failure?


Pastor Nick Nilson from Lakewood Church teaches us how to "hold it down". Nick knows what we need to be able to stay strong in the midst of the struggles in life and how we can stay on track even when everyone around us is waiting for us to give up already. I like what Nick Nilson says closer to the end of the sermon: "Oftentimes just after our greatest setback in life we experience our greatest miracle in life."


If we would have decided to give up that moment when everything seemed so hopeless we would never had gotten to see the miracle. The reality is that life on earth will include some really hard struggles and pain, but when we find the hope and strength to "hold it down" even when things look bad we will get to see the miracle at the end.

Diamonds out of dust

Hawk Nelson's song "diamonds" is one of my favorite songs to listen to in the middle of the struggles of life. It's comforting to be reminded of the fact that it's often in the fire that the most beautiful changes happen. I wish I could say that this isn't true, but looking back at my life I can't disagree with that fact. I have definitely learned a lot more from the uphill battles in life than I have learned from the days that everything is great.


I didn't understand why it's so important to not use people and break someone's heart until I experienced my own first heartbreak. I didn't think that it was that important to always show everyone around me appreciation and respect, until I experienced others treating me without appreciation and respect. I definitely come to God more often and pray more when I'm in the middle of a struggle than I do on a good day.


Although I don't like the struggles of life I know that I wouldn't be who I am today if I had not gone through what I've gone through in life. It's often in the fire that our character is refined the most. God has his way of creating beautiful diamonds out of all that dust. If we stay strong through our struggles and don't give up we will come out on the other side of each struggle more beautiful than we were before.

Do Something

You often hear people say I don’t believe in God because if there was a good God up there in heaven looking down on us he wouldn’t allow so much pain. This way of thinking makes sense in a way, but when I think of God as our Father in heaven it helps me understand God’s plan better. God created the earth and everything was good, then he created us and the trouble started. This scenario makes me think of how most couples have a pretty nice life together, until they have kids, then the troubles start. Just kidding! J

Although, it does help to think about how we relate to our own kids when they misbehave to better understand how God relates to us. When our kids get themselves in trouble what do we do? Do we clean up all their messes for them and let them get away with bad behavior? No we do not, or at least if we are good parents we don’t clean up all our children’s messes. We tell them to clean up their own messes, under our guidance and supervision of course. We don’t abandon them in their troubles, but we don’t do the work for them either, because we know that they need to deal with the mess themselves to be able to learn from their mistakes.

I believe God relates to us in the same way, when we get ourselves in trouble he wants us to figure things out, but he will never leave us alone in our struggles. God will always be by our side to strengthen us when we are weak and to guide us when we are lost. If we come to Him with our problems he will always offer us help, but he won’t do the work for us, because he too wants us to learn something from our mistakes and grow into better people than we were before.

It’s tempting to blame God for everything that is wrong in our world but when we think about the fact that God has created seven billion solutions for the problems in this world (us) then can we really put the blame on him? God has done his part, he has created each one of us with one or many gifts and skills. We are all equipped to “do something” in this world, but we choose if we are going to put these gifts to use or not.

 

I can choose to sit back and complain about everything that is wrong or I can turn my focus towards the particular task that God has created me for.  Each one of us is the solution for some particular problem in this world, but as long as we choose to stand still and do nothing not much will change will it? It’s time for us to do something! J

 

My help comes from You

for KING & COUNTRY's song Shoulders reminds me not to fear even when I find myself in the middle of a storm or stand in front of a huge mountain in my life. My help will always come from God. I'm never alone in my struggles.