Reflection

  17^th October 2023

'Tammy Rotzoll comments on'

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HOW TO TRUST GOD WHEN EVERYTHING IS FALLING APART

It's easy to trust God when everything is going great, but it's an entirely different story trusting God in the difficult times.

Am I right?

How do we know God is working, even in those spiritually dark times?
How do we know He's working in all circumstances in our life?

Up until a number of years ago, I dealt with the trials in my life by pulling the proverbial covers over my head. I did everything I could to ignore them.

The problem is, it never worked.

While I pretended to disregard the mess, it was all I could think about.

I became preoccupied with my difficulties and felt paralyzed by my circumstances.
I felt hopeless and alone; certain God was nowhere to be found.

How about you?

But it was in those dark, difficult times in my life that I learned God hadn't left me at all; that He'd been with me all along.

It was in the pain of a chronic illness -
that bulldozed its way into my life, wrecking everything in its path - where I learned that it truly is possible to have peace and pain at the very same time!

But how do we get there?

How do we stop suffocating from all the challenges in our life?
How do we get up every morning, with the strength to keep going?
And why should we trust God in the difficult times?

Before we can begin trusting God in the tough times, we first need to understand some basic truths - things that are hard to remember when everything around us is falling apart.

With the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden, our world is now full of sin.

It doesn't mean God has forgotten us, nor does it mean His love for us has changed. In fact, it couldn't be further from the truth.

"Because of this, the world in which we live today is not the world as God intended it to be. It is, in a very real sense, a defective and abnormal world."

God loves us unconditionally. There's nothing we do that will lessen it, nor is there anything we can do to increase it.
His love is there, nonetheless.

And since God loves us unconditionally, He will never let anything destroy us, nor does He want us to stay in the pit of that pain.

It doesn't mean that we'll go through life without trials and difficulties. It means that He's with us the whole time, using the brokenness to help us grow spiritually.

God will never waste our tough times. He'll use them to bring us closer to Him - to teach us how to rely fully on Him.
But we must be willing to say, "Teach me, Lord. Show me what I can learn in this situation."

"Trusting God is not about ignoring your feelings or reality.
It is not pretending that everything is OK when it isn't.
Trusting God is living a life of belief in and obedience to God even when it's difficult." and being honest about your feelings.

It's about inviting Him into your challenges and knowing that even if something doesn't turn out the way you want, God is still good and will always have your best interest at heart.

Trusting God in the dark times is learning how to say, not my will but yours be done.

The beautiful truth about God's unconditional love for us is that no matter how broken or out of control life feels,
it's never too late to invite Him in.

Tammy Rotzoll
is the founder and owner of Footprints of Inspiration and podcast host at A Faithful God Podcast (which can be found on your favorite podcast player).
She lives in Virginia with her husband and together they're learning how to navigate their fun, new adventure as empty nesters.
Join Tammy and the FOI community and discover the freedom that comes from saying, "Heck yeah, God! I'm all in!"

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HOW DOES SATAN MAKE OUR LIVES MORE DIFFICULT

Ah, Satan!

He's crafty and wily - and he's so good at what he does.
What is his goal you ask >>> to separate us from God.

He knows our fears and insecurities and will use them to make us believe we're alone.
He tells us that if God loved us, He'd never allow us to go through dark times in our life.

And it's a flat-out lie.

The devil wants us to worry about what's next, so we can't enjoy what's happening now.

When we know Satan is going to use every trick in the book to pull us away from God, it actually gives us all the power!

We already know he's going to do it, so we can more easily recognize when he's working.
And we can stop him in his tracks!

We can get into warrior pose when those lies and insecurities fill our heads and yell, "Not today Satan! You're no match for my God!" (Seriously, I do this all the time!)

You, my friend, have the power of God within you through the Holy Spirit.
You just haven't learned how to recognize the truth from the lies.
But with practice and a close relationship with God, you soon will.

Stil more to follow