When I first started posting on Instagram I had very few likes. If I got 20 I thought I was doing well. One day, I posted an image that went viral, at least compared to my other images. It was nothing special – handwritten black text on a white background. Simple. The reason why everyone “liked it” was because this was what it said: “Good things and hard things are often the same thing when they come from God.”
I posted the quote because it spoke to me. What? God gives us hard things. Yes, yes he does. I spend a lot of time fighting with God. Asking him why. Asking him how. Telling him he doesn’t love me because of x-y-z. Wrestling with some of the challenges in my path, and growing frustrated when I don’t receive the help I believe I deserve.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to the dawning realisation that God isn’t going to take away everything in life I don’t like. He isn’t going to whip out the cards that have “challenge” on them and hide them at the bottom of the pack; rather, he is going to use them to teach me things. He is going to walk me through them. Step by often painful step.
When it comes to hard times we have two choices:
1. Wish away your pain and frustration; or
2. Let your pain and frustration pull you closer to God, and let him use hard times for good.
Hard times make your relationships stronger
When things become difficult you find out who your “real” friends are. Difficulties have a way of filtering out the nonsense people in your life, and leaving you with the ones who actually care. When we share challenging times with friends, our relationships gain depth. Walking with friends through challenges makes people grow closer in a way that can not be done in only the good times.
Hard times make you appreciate the good times
Going through difficulties is like living on boarding school food and then coming home to Mom’s home cooking (provided Mom is a good cook). It tastes so much better because you know how bad it can be. Hard times aren’t nice. They aren’t easy, but they do teach us to appreciate the rewards at the end of the seasons. Think of saving up for years to buy a house you’ve always wanted: You will treasure that house. If you had loads of houses and you got given another one, it wouldn’t be anything special. Too much good stuff and we become spoilt and unappreciative.
Hard times grow your character
The famous psychologist Viktor Frankl noted the following in his studies: If our circumstances will not change, then we ourselves are forced to change. Hard times make you more mature. Hard times teach you patience, empathy, kindness, longsuffering, and integrity. In every difficulty there is a lot of gold which can be learned, if we allow ourselves to be moulded by the challenge.
Hard times bring you closer to God
God’s primary concern is not your comfort, fame, ease of living, new shoes, or heartbreak. Yes, he cares about these things, but what he desires more than anything else is you. He desires relationship. When things get difficult and we can no longer fix them ourselves or join together all the dots, that is when we start to call out to God. Hard times make us humble before God. As a human race we are infatuated with ourselves. We are selfish by nature and it, so often, takes something very difficult to knock us off our road of self-satisfaction so we can get real about what actually matters.
Don’t let hard things get you down. Don’t wish away every challenge and don’t blame God for every unfortunate event in your life. Take responsibility for what you can change – your attitude. Then come to God in prayer. Talk to him, ask him for help, let him guide you through to the other side. He made you, he knows you, and he’ll be there through it all, waiting… waiting for you to turn to him.