WILL IT MAKE YOU OR BREAK YOU?

“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials,  that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ” – 1 Peter 1:6-7

There are times in life that you just feel like every day is a Monday, ya know? It’s like from every angle of your life there’s something to worry about, something to fear or be down about.  We have two options when we get to this spot in our journey.  We can let it break us, or we can let it make us.

You can let it break you by concentrating on the problems.  Sometimes they are mountains and you just cannot find a way around them.  Health issues, financial issues, relationship issues – they can all create worry and stress that just seem to have no end or solution.  It’s like your life has become a horror movie, and you just don’t look away.  When you don’t look away it just gets worse and worse, and your head fills with doubts, and those doubts grow into possibilities, and those possibilities start to keep you up at night until you are broken.

But God tells us in the above passage that these times come to us not to harm us, but to grow our faith, to make it genuine, to make it more valuable than gold.  It comes to allow us opportunity to praise and honor God.  We’re told in Hebrews 11:1 that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things NOT seen”.  In order to grow that faith, we have to stop concentrating on the problem, and start looking at the solution God will craft from our faith.  If you keep looking at the problem, you’ll be broken.  But instead of doing all your thinking on the problem, start thinking of the solution God will provide.  Looking forward to what is not yet seen will grow your faith.  It will give you hope.  It will make you stronger instead of breaking you. 

Friend, concentrate on the blessings of the past, the times He has brought you through the fires and storms of life.  He has a great plan for each of us.  We just need to remain faithful, remain streadfast, abiding in Him.  There is nothing in this life that is too big of a problem for Almighty God.