Perspective

Throughout my short lifetime, I have had incidents that my initial reactions were, "Oh God, why are you putting me through this?" "Why me?", among other questions. The more I thought the situation over though, the more I realized that God is putting me through this so I can grow. God is a sovereign God, He will not forsake you, ever. He gives us trials and temptations in life we can grow. In James chapter 1, the author tells the reader to consider it pure joy that we face trials because through those trials we gain perseverance. What I gain out of that passage is not only that we can gain perseverance, but in everything we do we can smile. "Even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because You are with me." This goes to say that even in the toughest of times, we can still have joy because we have the Lord on our side, and we also know that we will persevere. So even in the face of death we can smile, we can laugh at Satan because even if we are killed, or even if something bad happens to us, even if everything is taken away from us, we still have all we ever want and need. Going back to what I was saying before, God puts us through tough situations so we can grow. I know that I have asked for more faith, more wisdom and more strength spiritually. After I pray that, I have it worked out in my mind how I think God will work it out or how He will give what I ask for up front. But that's not how God works, if we get what we ask for every time, we won't really learn anything. What I'm saying is that you should be looking for ways you can learn things even through tough times. That's one thing I've learned, and am still learning, to look at things from an outside perspective, because sometimes that's the only way you will learn something.