Helpless and Unhappy or Grateful and Glad?
So many people are living in difficult times right now. All of the news seems to be bad and it has seemed like every time we turn around something else negative is happening to make us feel helpless and unhappy.
Helplessness and unhappiness are tools of the devil. In times of trouble he uses them to make us lose sight of all of God’s blessings. However, along with being tools of the devil, they are also choices we make on a daily basis. Sometimes we choose to feel helpless or unhappy rather than looking to God. We fail to stop and meditate on the positive and good things that have come our way because we are blinded by the negative.
The pages of the Bible are full of accounts of bad things that happened to people: Cain killed Abel; Abraham and Sarah were childless for many years; Jacob tricked his brother Esau; Joseph was hated by his own brothers and thrown into a pit; Moses didn’t get to grow up with his mother and father and was given a difficult task of leading some ungrateful people; David was hated and hunted by Saul; David also took a woman who was not his wife; Hannah was barren and accused of being drunk; Job lost everything and had miserable friends…need I go on? Mary and Joseph were denied a place at the inn and her child was born in a stable; she had to watch as that son, Jesus, was betrayed, hated, spat upon, struck, lied about, deserted, beaten, and hung on a cross.
If those things were all we knew about those people, we would certainly have cause to feel helpless and unhappy. But, as Paul Harvey used to say, we know “the rest of the story.”
Two words sum up what we know. We find those two words (or words with the same meaning) over and over in our Bibles – “But God…” Those two words made the difference in the lives of all of those people I mentioned above. When God was at the center of their lives, we know the rest of the story. They went from feeling helpless and unhappy to grateful and glad.
What often appears to us to be hopeless, appears that way because we lose sight of those two words – “but God.” Those two words can make the difference between feeling helpless and unhappy or grateful and glad.
Life moves on day after day whether we think positively or negatively. When we start to look into God’s word and see all that He did for those who went before us and the examples they set for our lives, we begin to feel grateful and glad. When we look around ourselves and see all the good things with which He has blessed us in this life, our attitudes will change from helpless and unhappy to grateful and glad.
“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26).
To Receive Every Article from A Legacy of Faith through Email for Free, Click Here
AUTHOR: Donna Faughn
