How Hardship Can Be Helpful

Imagine if God were to say to someone, “In the coming year, I’ve got you covered. I’m going to give you more money than you can spend in a year, so you don’t have to worry about finances. You’re going to have perfect health. You will not have one conflict or a single problem.”

When do you think God would hear from that person next? Probably a year later.

Because challenges come our way, hardships come our way, and needs come our way, we become dependent on God. The very things we don’t like actually can be things that help us.

Pain comes our way in life and brings us to God, who gives us the solution to our pain. Pain can be the tool that brings us to see our real need for Him. We don’t like the pain, but it gets us to the One who can remove it.

When we come to the Lord and have sin in our lives, He says, “Here’s what you need to do. You need to confess your sin.” As 1 John 1:9 tells us, “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness” (NLT). Confess is a word that means “to agree.”

We agree with God and see our sin for what it is. We don’t make excuses for it. We don’t rationalize it. We own it. We take responsibility.

There are a lot of ways sin can infiltrate our lives, and that’s why we need to confess our sins on a regular basis. The more we grow spiritually, the more we’ll realize that we need to grow spiritually. And the more we see of Jesus, the more we see how unlike Jesus we are.