When I think of all the ways my faith helps me, I can come up with a long list. Have you ever had a day where everything seems to go wrong? I have. When those times come and they will come for most of us, we have a choice to make. We can whine and feel sorry for ourselves or we can stop and consider the problem and decide what our reaction will be. There are 3 simple ways I use my faith to overcome challenges.
We have to stop and decide what our next thoughts and actions will be. Our thoughts so often determine our actions. If we let ugly thought in our minds and allow them to stay, we will struggle. Sometimes we can even look back and see the moment we let our negative thoughts overcome our positive.There are many ways I use my faith to persevere however, I am going to discuss 3 easy ways I use my faith to overcome situations that are challenging.
1. Perspective
The first way I use faith to overcome a situation is to put it into a proper perspective. I only have to look around me to see the troubles that have befallen others. We all know families that are struggling with illness or health issues. If I compare my challenge to any number of others that are clearly suffering more, I can understand that my plight may not be as serious as I thought. Putting an issue into perspective helps us see the reality of our own situation. Our reality might become skewed if we constantly focus on ourselves. Focus on others and there will be less time to dwell on our own issues.
2. Pray
The second way I use my faith to overcome situations that are a challenge is to stop and pray. I talked about the use of prayer in my life in a previous post found here: http://www.savingmoneylivingfaithfully.com/focus-on-the-goal/. I know we are all busy, but we can pray anywhere. It doesn’t require anything other than a willing and repentant heart. We can pray out loud in a quiet space. We can pray silently as we drive the car down a quiet country road. The only one who can stop us from praying is ourselves. We each are responsible for our own prayer lives. Since this is a major way we communicate with God, can anything be more important? Don’t just pray during the challenging times, pray every day. The habit of prayer will make it easier to turn to prayer when we are facing obstacles.
3. This World Is Not My Home
The third way of the 3 simple ways I use faith to overcome challenges is to keep in mind the constant reminder that this world is not my home. We are all pilgrims and sojourners on this earth as the Bible reminds us in 1 Peter 2:11. This world is not all we have to look forward to. If we are faithful, we have the hope of heaven someday. Whatever challenges we are given in this life are placed there for a reason. The reason may not be shown to us at the time, but we have to trust that God allows us to be challenged for His reasons. We do not ever see the big picture. We can only see our small part.
There are many ways to use faith to overcome challenges. I have found that my faith can play a big part in how well I overcome challenging situations. I am stronger after I overcome setbacks. There are many other ways that challenges can be faced. I wanted to discuss just a few that are helpful for me. How does your faith play a part in handling challenging situations?
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