Are you going through some rough times right now? Does your rough times seem like hardships that just don’t seem to get any better no matter what? If you are in a hard place right now and you’ve been going through for a while, we know and understand just how you feel. What we’ve learned ourselves about hardships in life is that they are absolutely terrible. They often come without your permission and force you to endure them longer than you want to and they often demand that you pay prices much higher than you want to have to pay. They intrude upon your life with violent force with no respect for your agenda, your desires, your wants or your needs. Hardships do not care at all. Not only are hardships in life awful, they are one of the worst kinds of afflictions in your life that God could ever possibly allow. If the pain in your life gets bad enough you may even wonder, why in the world would such a good, kind, loving and forgiving God allow you to go through so many hardships in life.

While the answer to why God allows hardships in your life could be many depending upon where you are in your life right now and where God is leading you to, we have learned that hardships give God a bad rap. When you are going through hardships it can make you think that God may not care, He is not around and He is not helping you. The reason we’ve learned that it is so easy to think this is because when you are forced to endure hardships you are in pain, and you just want the pain to be eased for your comfort or changed so that you can at-least endure it without so much suffering and drama. We’ve learned that God is very present in all hardships situations and He is NOT missing at all, even though it may feel like it, look like it or seem like it because of bad circumstances. While God doesn’t always change all hardship situations, we’ve noticed that He uses them in special ways to accomplish His purposes in the lives of those who love Him, trust Him and follow Him. Here are some of the reasons God allows Hardships in your life;

1. God allows hardships to shape you, build your character, strengthen you and teach you about Himself, His ways and How He does things. If you were to think about it long enough you’d realize that you really don’t learn much about God when you have good times. Usually the only thing that you learn about God when times are good is that God is generous, He is forgiving and He is loving and He is kind. But when you go through hell, and there is no way out, and no one to help you, or you’re sick in your body and can’t get the medicine to work, or your bank account is empty and your bills are piling up, and they are threatening to evict you or take your car, and you call upon God, that’s when you find out who God really is. It is the crucible of Hardships that prepare you to meet God and learn Him for who He really is. That’s 1 reason why Psalm 119:71 states, “It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn your statues”. So as you learn who God really is, He works with you, walks with you, strengthens you, encourages you, and helps you have the confidence and the boldness to go on in spite of hardships attempts to keep you held hostage in deplorable conditions. For when God’s purpose in your hardships have been completed, He changes the deplorable conditions that tried to hold you hostage, and opens the door of your circumstances and lets you walk out never to have to look back at those hardships again!

2. God draws you into the incubator of His protective care to deepen His work in your life and as He does this, He begins to teach you what He wants you to know, when He wants you to know it and how He wants you to know it. Your hardships serve as a holding tank to keep you confined and focused so that God is able to do this great work in you and through your life.

3. In order to prepare you for the perfect plans that God has ahead for you, He often allow hardships to interrupt your life even if they appear to come violently and without permission and with great force to alert you that He has altered time, and He is redirecting you according to what He feels is important for you to deal with right then. The interruption God allows usually requires your total attention which in turn diverts you from the way that you were going because God has another plan for your life in which He needed to redirect you so that He could properly prepare you for the plans that He has for your life. It is in this way that God is directing your path and is showing you what is important to tend to right then. Proverbs 3:6 states, “In all your ways acknowledge God, and He will show you which path to take”.

So those are some of the reasons that God allows hardships in your life, but to sustain you through the rough and tough times in your life that hardships bring, God wants to implant within you new visions, new dreams, new hopes and new desires. He doesn’t want the distaste of what He’s allowed to turn you sour and bitter towards Him or those He’s allowed in your life, so, He invites you to come to Him in prayer for a time of refreshing and renewal. Let Him reignite within you the flames of desire that may have gone out because of the hardships of life, the pain of life and the sufferings of life. Let His presence engulf you like a cool drink on a hot day. Let Him breathe on you and blow away the frustrations that my have mounted up because you may be tired of having to go through for so long now.

Want to meet with God in prayer and accept His invitation? Join us in this simple prayer;

Holy Father,
Magnificent creator, life giver, life sustain-er,  the maker of Heaven and Earth. Please forgive me for my mounting frustrations, my lack of patience and lack of understanding,I invite you to breathe in my direction again, fill me with new joy, new love, new life and change me within. Father, give me new hope, new visions, new dreams, new desires, and new joy, fill my life with happiness again as I wait upon you. Father I know you have the power to change my hardship circumstances, and my thorns in the flesh, but if you choose not to Father, help me to accept it as your will and give me the grace and the mercy that I will need to be able to endure my hardships Father with joy and peace, I ask and pray, in Jesus name I ask and pray – Amen

After you pray to God, spend time at the below link and let God lead you into a deeper relationship with Him!

Spend Time With God!