We experience many hardships in life, and it can be easy to question God’s love and care for us in the midst of them. Today we’ll talk about some reminders for the next time we’re tempted to doubt the faithfulness of God.
My second semester finals were draining me, and I had just woken from a nap when I got a phone call. Something had happened. A beloved family member was in a car wreck, and he didn’t survive.
He was only nineteen.
That was the first time I experienced those reality-shifting moments in my adult life—when the future is forever changed from one moment to the next.
There have been more.
Now it’s easy to live life sometimes knowing the peaceful times will last only so long until the next life-changing moment and wonder when that shift will happen again.
Then there are times when the difficulties seem to roll from one into another.
And it’s easy to question God’s love and care because He had the power to stop it all and didn’t.
Why would a loving God allow so much bad in our lives?
Reminders for When You Doubt God’s Love and Care
#1 – God never promised to remove all hardship when we accepted Him.
I often lament the fact that we can’t learn things once and be done. How much further in my life would I be if I didn’t have to circle through it?
Hardships in life certainly fall into this cyclical process.
Why do we revert back to thinking that life will reach a point where it’s smooth?
But Scripture never promises us a comfortable ride through life. It does promise, however, that God is always near in the hard.
Because even after becoming a child of God, we still live in a fallen world with carnal bodies. We have the hope of one day living free of sin, fear, and shame, but that won’t happen while on Earth.
#2 – God is a loving father.
This may seem weird when talking about hardship, but it’s completely relevant. Oddly, it’s a concept that is obvious, yet I overlook it so many times.
As earthly parents, and even those of us who haven’t been blessed with children of our own, we tend to intuitively understand that we can’t give our children everything they want, and we can’t protect them from every negative thing in their lives.
We may struggle with where to draw those lines, but we know that, if we were somehow able to shield them from everything, our children would be spoiled, self-centered hellions.
We understand this implicitly. Yet, somehow, we expect God to shield us, His children, from everything. When He doesn’t intervene, we accuse Him of not caring.
#3 – Perhaps God did intervene.
When times are hard, it’s easy to focus on the negative. But I have learned and relearned so many times in my life that even when bad things happen, there is still good. There are countless ways that God was still working in the situation.
He does intervene—just maybe not in the way I want.
#4 -The situation could have been even worse.
Speaking of God intervening, whatever bad that happens to us isn’t as bad as it could have been without God’s working it for our good or His limiting presence on evil and sin.
#5 – Revisit your altar.
I am fascinated by altars. They are common in Scripture to commemorate the grace and work of God both for a testimony and a reminder of God’s faithfulness.
Whereas images in Scripture are idolatrous, altars serve as Godly image reminders. Perhaps God encourages this practice because He knows how forgetful we are. He knows that we get short-sighted when facing new things and can only see the latest hardship looming over us. Revisiting our altars of God’s faithfulness is important to remind us of God’s great love and care for us throughout our lives. We can do this in many ways: with real stones commemorating certain events, reading through our journal, listing out all the ways that God was faithful in the big and small areas of our lives previously.
We all have hard times, and we question God’s love and care when facing our latest one. God never promised to shield us from all difficulty, but then He never leaves us nor forsakes us in them either.
We live in a fallen world, and through the hard, God’s care for us is apparent.
What Reminders help you remember God’s love and care in your life? Share in the comments below.
More reading
- Waiting: Psalms for When You’re Not Sure God Cares from HISsparrowBlog
- 7 Encouraging Verses to Remind Us of God’s Faithfulness from HISsparrowBlog
I frequently link up with the following: Grace & Truth with Embracing the Unexpected, Tell His Story with Jeanne Takenaka, and Let’s Have Coffee with Joanne Viola.
“I often lament the fact that we can’t learn things once and be done.” — Oh, me, too! I guess that’s why God so often tells us to remember. Some lessons stick after a while, but some I have to keep relearning.
I remind myself of many of the things you listed here. I’m also reminded that we’re not all promised 80+ years. What seems like a waste when someone dies young still glorifies God if they were faithful to Him with the time they had. There’s a quote I can’t find or remember exactly about someone who died young having that much more time in heaven than the rest of us.
I also remind myself that God sees the big picture, not only for me, but for others in my life.
When I was seriously ill once, these verses from Lamentations 3:32-33 comforted me “Though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.”
Ashley, thank you for encouraging us to trust God even when it seems like He is not answering our prayers. In the hard places we must speak truth to our minds to remind us of God’s goodness and unfailing love in every circumstance.
Ashley, I appreciate your vulnerability here. And I find this >>” When times are hard, it’s easy to focus on the negative. But I have learned and relearned so many times in my life that even when bad things happen, there is still good. There are countless ways that God was still working in the situation.” to be true in many circumstances in my life. I haven’t always thought that way, but as I keep maturing in Christ he is good all the time.
Visiting today from Joanne’s
We so need to be reminded to trust God even when it seems like He is quiet or not answering our prayers. There are times He is at work in ways we cannot see. May we cling to what we know is true – God is faithful, and He is always at work. Blessings!