Consider Life's Challenges A Gift

Consider Life's Challenges A GiftJames 1:2-4 “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”I love how God works. Sometimes, I just laugh at how he orchestrates everything and how He just knows what we need to hear. It’s like He keeps telling you something in a bunch of different ways until we get it. If you have been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you probably know how much I love talking about healing. I love praying for people for healing. I believe with my whole being that God can heal everyone, and I will pray with anyone who will let me for God to heal them. As you can probably imagine, not everyone I pray with for healing is healed. This confuses me as I don’t understand why this is.I know that God’s ways are higher than our ways and that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. I know that God knows infinitely more than we do and that He sees the whole picture when we only see a tiny part of the picture. I know that He knows the future and that He knows what He is doing. I know all of this, and yet I still don’t understand why some people have healed on this side of heaven and some are not. I don’t understand why some people are healed instantly and some take months or years. God and I chat about this often, and He keeps trying to explain it to me, and I don’t seem to be getting it.This month’s theme is the dark night of the soul. If you are unfamiliar with this, the "Dark Night of the Soul" refers to a spiritual crisis or period of deep inner struggle and desolation, where a person feels distant from God or disconnected from their sense of purpose and meaning. It often involves intense feelings of doubt, confusion, and loss but is ultimately seen as a necessary stage in spiritual growth or transformation. The term originates from the writings of the 16th-century mystic St. John of the Cross, who described it as a painful yet purifying experience that leads to a closer union with God. I had heard of this before. However, I did not know much about it. However, this is what a few people in mentoring wanted me to cover, so I did some research and learned a lot about it.Yesterday, I decided to get an audiobook by Thomas Moore called, “Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ordeals.”In this book, Thomas Moore talks about how we are always trying to end difficult times quickly. If we are sick, we want to be healed immediately. If we are struggling emotionally, we want the struggle to end quickly. If we are uncomfortable in any way, we want to do whatever we need to do to get comfortable as quickly as we can. Thomas said in his book that we are doing ourselves a disservice when we do this. Instead of trying to escape our misery, what if we approached it with curiosity? What if we tried to understand it and what it was trying to teach us? This seemed to stand out to me because I was just talking to a friend the other day about how I just wanted her trouble to end. She was saying that she could see how she would be so much stronger when she was on the other side of this, and I was just thinking, God, can you stop these bad dreams now? Why wait, why keep struggling?Now, to be clear, although God could stop these bad dreams now, He hasn’t chosen to do so. It is not as if she hasn’t prayed for them to stop. It’s not as if plenty of people haven’t prayed for them to stop. So, it got me thinking maybe Thomas Moore is on to something here. Maybe I am just in a rush to have God heal these people because then they will be more comfortable or out of pain or misery, and yet God knows that the uncomfortable feelings that they feel now are nothing compared to the glory they will feel if they just hold out a little longer.I have been talking to the Lord for a long time now to try to understand why He does what He does, especially with regard to healing. When I heard this explanation from Thomas Moore, I felt like the Lord was talking directly to me. Then I went to a meeting at Encounter last night where about 16 of my graduating class got together. We try to do this once a month. The topic for last night was a renewal of the mind. We all asked Jesus to show us one place where He would like to renew our minds. This is what I felt like I heard the Lord say, “I would like to renew your mind around healing. Not every person needs to be healed. Sometimes, I do work within the illness I will highlight those I want to be prayed over.” Next, I asked Jesus how He wanted me to think about this mindset. This is what I thought I heard, “I want you to think like I do I want you to know I have my own ways of thinking and reasons for healing that have nothing to do with your ability to pray over people. You are not doing anything wrong, and you are not the reason they are not healed.Then today, I turned to James in the Bible to look for a verse, as I recently heard someone recommend James as a great place to start if you are new to reading the Bible. I thought I would check it out and see why James was a good place to start. Then, the very first line I read confirmed what God has been telling me lately. I know that was a roundabout way of explaining how I got to this verse and why I thought it was special, but that is what I felt led to share.I think what this verse is telling us and what God has been trying to tell me is that we can learn from the hard times we are going through. God doesn’t make us sick. He doesn’t hurt us or break our hearts. He doesn’t make us lose our job or lose our loved ones. God is not the cause of our pain and yet He can use our pain for our good. He can take this difficult time you are going through and use it to form you into a stronger, more resilient person.I know suffering is uncomfortable. I know life can through some pretty crappy things at us, and we just want to escape all of it. We want to be comfortable and skate through life with minimal issues. I get this, and it makes sense. What I feel the Lord is trying to teach me is that God knows how long we need to be in something before it has sufficiently changed us. If we leave a situation too early, we may not have reaped the full benefit from it. Do you know what is even worse than having to go through years of agony? Having to go through years of agony and not reaping any benefits from it.God knows what we need. He knows our future, He knows our past, He knows our innermost being. He knows how much we can handle, and He knows the perfect time to take us out of the fire so we are pure gold with no more impurities. He has also made it clear to me that this doesn’t mean we need to stop asking for the healing or the relief of the situation. He tells us over and over again in the Bible to be persistent and that He rewards persistence. What He is telling us is that while we are waiting on His perfect timing, we don't have to be frustrated and discouraged. As this verse says, we can “consider it a sheer gift” when life’s challenges come upon us. It is giving us a chance to grow more into the person God is calling us to be. Our challenges help us to become more mature in our faith.I pray that the Lord continues to renew my mind in this area. I pray He shows me how to be patient in the wait. I pray He shows me how to approach my struggles with curiosity and allows me to have the strength to sit in my struggles without trying to wish them away before they are done doing good work in me. I pray He gives you a renewal of mind also!Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we find it so hard to understand how you work sometimes. We don’t understand why you do the things you do, and so we are asking for a renewal of the mind, Lord. Renew our minds and help us think more like you think. Help us to understand a bit more about how you work and why you do the things you do. Help us to see our struggles and building blocks to becoming the person you made us to be. Give us the strength to hold out when we feel like we can’t hold out any longer. Be with us, Lord, every step of the way! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you want more information on the Dark Night of the Soul, please email me at Catherine @findingtruenorthcoaching.com, and you can join us for mentoring tonight. Tonight, I will summarize Thomas Moore’s book, John of the Cross’s book, and St. Theresa of Avila’s books on the Dark Night of the Soul. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email [email protected]. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I am giving you at this moment a greater capacity to see my presence and my gifts to you in each moment of your life. Don't miss the gifts I give you in your sufferings and your struggles. Don't miss the gifts I give you in your joys and your fulfillment. I am always blessing you. I am always gifting you. You will have grateful hearts because you will recognize my love for you.” www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace