James 1:2-4 (NKJV)
2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces [a]patience. 4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be [b]perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
All of us will face a time of crisis at various points in our life. A crisis is a time of danger or intense difficulty and a time when decisions may have to be made.
One challenge with the average Christian today is that their capacity to handle hardship is very low. This is because we do not know who we are and the God that we serve or we have a wrong understanding of what salvation is. We complain and give up in the midst of a crisis thinking that God has forgotten us. For some strange reason we have swallowed the lie that as long as we believe in Jesus then we should not experience any crisis. Jesus himself told us that in this world we will face tribulations but we should be of good cheer because he has overcome the world.
With every crisis is an opportunity to know and experience God on a deeper level. A crisis presents us with an opportunity to exercise our faith and to see God do something amazing.
David is a good example. He goes to the field to take supplies to his brothers and he finds a crisis. What does he do? He sees an opportunity and he takes it on. Remember he is only a teenage boy and the whole army plus the king are hiding because of this crisis. He was able to do this because he understood who he was and the covenant relationship he had with God.
The early church also had its share of crisis after another and many during that period lost their lives for the sake of standing for the God they believed in. Paul the apostle’s life is riddled with one crisis after another and yet we see him writing the pages of the New Testament filled with encouragement and he does so mostly from the confines of a prison cell, right in the midst of a crisis.
Every crisis is an opportunity to exercise your faith, an opportunity to experience God on a new level, and opportunity to grow to a new level.
Romans 8:28 tells us, all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose. All the great men and women in the bible have their names and stories recorded because they knew how to overcome a crisis and even the cease the opportunities hidden thereof.
Reflections
What is the greatest test of faith you have gone through in your Christian walk?
How do you generally respond when a hardships come your way?
How would you encourage a young believer who is almost giving up the faith because of the hardships in their life?
