We all go through rough patches in our lives. Right now especially, a lot of people are struggling. If you aren't struggling now, it's inevitable that you will. We're even told in James that our faith will be tested. But what James also tells us is that the testing of your faith will produce steadfastness. But even if the news that this is totally normal and will make you even stronger doesn't comfort you, hopefully these words that I have prayed over the past few weeks and type down tonight will.
A Few People In the Bible Who Were Discouraged.
Sometimes when I have something going on in my life that I don't feel too right about, I always like to look to people who have had similar experiences. So whether that would be being stressed out about school work, feeling like I'm not enough, or even feeling discouraged I always try to find someone who has been through it and see where they are now. Fun fact: there's actually quite a few people in the Bible who were discouraged, we'll just talk about a couple examples for the sake of time.
-John The Baptist. John the baptist was sent by God to bear witness about the light. This man converted so many Christians but you know what? He was human. He got discouraged. There was a point in time where he was put in prison (Matthew 11:2-15). He questioned if Jesus was really the messiah or not.
-The Psalmist, David. In Psalms 42, David says "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." Here David is discouraged but is asking himself why. He acknowledges that his hope is in God, yet he still feels discouraged. I've been there for sure. The feeling of "why am I feeling like this? I was the best in my faith than I had ever been 2 days ago!". So as frustrating as this can be, look at what David said at the end of the verse. "Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." He gives himself encouragement! I pray to be like David, that in times where I feel my faith failing, I still remind myself of how awesome my God is.
Pray
Prayer is one of those things that is such an easy thing but I think a lot of people just kinda forget to do (myself included). Prayer is so so so important. Think of it as a friendship, the less and less you talk to a friend of yours, the harder it is to have a strong relationship with them. The same is with God! The less we talk to Him, the farther we get from Him. I've noticed that the more I pray, I'm significantly happier and more at peace. Being honest with God and telling Him everything that's going on will help your relationship with Him be more intimate. Something that is awesome about talking to God is that we don't have to sit there, bow our heads, close our eyes, and put our hands together. There are so many different ways that we can pray! Really the only time we see prayer is in church of at the dinner table. We can write down prayers, we can pray while we're doing chores, we can pray while we're driving to work or school, seriously we can pray anywhere. However prayer looks to you, talking to God is always going to help immensely.
Study The Word
If you're anything like me, it's really hard to just open my Bible and start reading (honestly it's like that for everything with me, I have to have a system or a specific thing in mind before I do something). I find it super helpful to follow along with a devo or a study guide. There are just so many cool things that we can do to help us get into our Bibles. Come Fill Your Cup is a phenomenal resource for that. They have this super cool thing called Bible Marking and if you don't know what it is, seriously go check it out, I'm positive that you'll love it. My way of describing it would be studying about a topic and Bible journaling, you'll just have to check it out, it's super fun. Now in the Devo realm, I recently found a website that I love. It's called Minted Truth and these devos are great! They're written for teens but I even got my grandma and my aunt hooked on them. For beginners it teaches about how to really get the most out of a Bible study (no matter where you are in your walk with God, this would be beneficial). Spending time in God's word will edify you and help you with your walk with Him so much.
Helping Others
When you feel like you've just "hit a wall" with your faith, helping others is a way that you can be encouraged. Getting to see the smile on someone's face or how much you truly helped them will just show you that God has given us a community. It will not only help them, it'll help you. A few ways we can help others is to
-write an elderly person a note (as an old soul, I can tell you this will make them smile so big.)
-send someone a text and just ask them how they're doing and start a conversation
-giving someone a call
-if someone you know is starting a small business during all of this, share their page! If you have the means to, maybe buy something from them!
-picking up groceries for someone
Seriously, just ask God to give you the opportunity or make the opportunity more clear to you for you to help someone. I promise you, it'll feel amazing.
Praising God
I realize that praising God can be kind of a hard thing to do when we're down. I don't know about ya'll though, but singing church hymns and even listening to them gets me so excited to get back to church. I cannot wait to be able to praise God with my brothers and sisters. If singing isn't really your thing, there are so many ways that you can still praise God. Sometimes when I'm reading my Bible, especially Psalms, I start to pray. I recite some of the words that the psalmists use because they are praising God. Christian podcasts are another really great thing to listen to. I'm not really a podcast girl but my cousin has a podcast that I love (I'm totally biased but it's a good podcast). He sits down and talks about the Lord. He even has a series called Kickstart where he talks for about 5-7 minutes to kind of "kickstart" our weekend. I'll have his podcast linked here. So whatever you find to be uplifting, don't hesitate!
This was definitely one of my more lengthy blog posts so if you stayed to the end I want to thank you so much. This is the first time that I've really just sat down and got to writing. I hope these words were encouraging to you and that you learned something new. I would love to from y'all! If you have any devo suggestions or anything to add to this post, please feel free to comment down below!!
Until next time,
Jolie Jo.