How much does God care about what we are going through?

He sees our difficulties and promises to never abandon or leave us. But do we believe Him or do we believe our emotions?

It’s pretty easy for the enemy to manipulate our emotions to feel abandonment and then whisper lies that God doesn’t care. “Because if He did, He would have…” fixed the mess, gotten us the raise, prevented our spouse from cheating…

What agreements are we making with demonic entities in this world?

Did you know that when you believe negative thoughts you are making agreements with darkness?

God never speaks unkindly of us, so who are we agreeing with when we speak unkindly about ourselves? Who plants unkind thoughts in our minds? Never God and rarely ourselves (Eph. 6:12).

Are we speaking hope over ourselves or negativity? God is a Creator who spoke things into existence. The crazy thing is that we since we are created in His image (Gen. 1:26), we too create with our words. But what are we creating when we speak ugly thoughts about ourselves, our bosses, our children and our neighbors?

Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” Like God, our words are not visible, but they do create.

Is it possible that negative faith and negative words create the very things we don’t want in our lives?

If we speak negativity such as, “I’m never going to get ahead; life is hard; I’m so frustrated; I’m so stupid; I’ll never get that promotion, he’ll never amount to anything” is it possible that those spoken words sets those very things into motion?

Is there truth to a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Strategies for Freedom

Is God giving us a strategy to create good things in our lives when He says to think on things that are good, and pure and lovely? (Phil. 4:8)? The Bible is full of strategies for living as overcomers, but it’s rooted in intimacy with God.

I think we often miss God’s presence. He is with us, yet we feel alone and abandoned. Difficult circumstances do not equate to a lack of love on God’s part. It’s easy to see how we fall into that trap of thinking God doesn’t care. The accuser feeds us lies about God’s character, and Hollywood sells us lies about love.

From our couch we see in HD color that love rescues, love enables, love doesn’t allow someone feel the pain of their consequences.

But God allowed His son to suffer pain and humiliation for the sake of love. Love does not equal ease of circumstances.

But I get it. We want relief. We don’t want to suffer anymore. But we have been badly deceived if we buy into any lie that blames God for not rescuing us from difficulty.

And I wonder how many of our difficulties could have been avoided if we’d sought God’s input? Fortunately, even when we don’t seek Him, He remains with us.

And as many parents understand, rescuing your child doesn’t develop them or draw them near your heart. Rescue relieves the pain, but it hinders the growth.

Difficulty when resting in God’s nurturing embrace can become a beautiful adventure, not without tears, but covered in peace.

God wants us to come home. To look for Him in the quiet moments of our day. When we look for Him, we will find Him. That’s His promise to us.

God promises that if we seek Him with all our hearts, we won’t be disappointed.

He longs for us. He longs to help us, to love us, to give us strategies for our circumstances. He longs to be our best friend.

Prayer

Father, I want to draw near to You and find You. I sense You calling to me and I long to go deeper. Meet with me in quiet moments. Teach me how to hear You more clearly. Teach me how to find You. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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