When you are in the midst of something, the way you see it can be so clouded by the emotions you are going through, the pain you might be in or even the level of stress that the situation is causing. These are all the feelings that the flesh likes to bring into the situation to stop us from seeing that God is actually there with us. However, once the situation starts to take a turn for the better and you can look back and reflect on the entire journey, you can choose to either have a really negative attitude toward everything you have experienced, or you can look back and find every single place that God provided, carried you through or helped you make the right choice to make the situation better.
Today is my birthday, and as I reflect back from Dec. 19th, 2013 to Dec. 19th, 2014 it is crazy to see what all has changed in my life. Things have taken place this year that could have caused me to just give up, throw in the towel, become extremely angry and bitter, put up walls all around me and refuse to get close to someone again. And I have had many people tell me that if that was my reaction they would totally understand. But I know that is not the reaction God would want from me. That is not the Christlike attitude He would want me to demonstrate to those who have watched me walk out this past year. And that is not the reaction that was going to create healing and allow me to walk into the better future that God has for me.
While I have gone through my journey I have been able to watch a few other people go through some hard things as well. And again, in the midst of it, it was easy to stand there and question where is God in this? How is He going to see this person through? What is He going to do to restore their life to something good again? And what I got to see is those who relied on him and kept their faith got to see exactly what God had in store for them. And those who blamed God, grew angry and bitter and let their circumstances rule them, unfortunately got to see what happens when you remove your faith and God from your situation.
Joshua 1:9 tells us not to be frightened or dismayed because the Lord your God is wherever you go! And that is the truth. That does not depend on circumstances or how dark things may look around you. The Lord God is with you! It is your choice to look for God in your situation, or to choose not to. If you choose to see all the negative and look at everything that is not going the way you thought it should, that will be all you see. The enemy will help you focus right in on those details. But if you sing praises to God and look for His hand in your situation every single day, you will see that! And when you can tell others how amazing God has been for you while you have gone through this storm, your testimony will speak louder than 1,000 messages on a Sunday morning. Tell people how good God is, how you see Him at work in your situation and how you are trusting Him no matter what your circumstances look like. And tell the enemy you will not see things through his eyes and he does not rule over your future...only God does. Even when things are dim, tell the enemy your trust God!
There is no better feeling than to have supernatural peace and supernatural joy in the midst of your storm. ONLY God can provide that....and He wants to and will...when you allow him to. It's up to you as to how you choose to see the things around you.
God, put in us a Christlike attitude. One that will allows us to rely on You, look to You for strength, choose to praise and trust You no matter what is going on around us. If Jesus could to that during his journey to the cross, we can do that in our trial too. Help us demonstrate You to those around us that are watching us go through things. Help us to build up our own faith and use our trial to build up the faith of those around us. We CHOOSE to praise You in this storm...or the next one...or the next one. We WILL defeat the enemy with an attitude of PRAISE! In Jesus name, Amen
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