This year has been rough. We’ve experienced multiple job losses. Had major career changes. Moved three times. Lived with family. Lived in a barn. Moved into a rental house. Caused significant water damage to said rental house (oops). Struggled financially. Struggled maritally. Hurt each other. Yelled at each other. Cried a lot. Turned from God. Turned to God. Thought we were turning to God but were actually putting our trust in a lot of less stable things (like ourselves).
So yeah. It’s been rough.
How I Handled the Struggles
I’d like to be able to write a lovely little blog post on the strategies I used to get through it all, but I’m still not even sure myself how I’m getting through it all. I genuinely can think of only one answer: Jesus. I truly do not know how anyone faces the world without Him because I promise you I would not be here if I didn’t have my Savior to rely on.
My Go-To Bad Day Listening Material
I was recently listening to the podcast Revived Thoughts. These guys take old sermons from famous (or lesser known) preachers, translate and modernize the language, and bring in different talents to preach the sermons anew. It’s really amazing because these sermons were made to be listened to, not read. So Revived Thoughts allows us to hear these sermons come to life again!
They recently did the sermon “Compel Them to Come In” by Charles Spurgeon, a favorite among Christian scholars. At one point, Spurgeon’s words struck me because it felt like he was literally describing me this year:
You are maimed; you have given up, as a forlorn hope, all attempt to save yourself, because you are maimed and your arms are gone. But you are worse off than that, for if you could not work your way to heaven, yet you could walk your way there along the road by faith; but you are maimed in the feet as well as in the hands; you feel that you cannot believe, that you cannot repent, that you cannot obey the stipulations of the gospel. You feel that you are utterly undone, powerless in every respect to do anything that can be pleasing to God. In fact, you are crying out—
“Oh, could I but believe,
Then all would easy be,
I would, but cannot, Lord relieve,
My help must come from thee.”
Struggling to Know My Faith is Enough
This is the struggle I feel so often. When my heart isn’t in it and I feel like my faith is weak, am I still a believer? Am I still saved? Have I turned from God without meaning to? Spurgeon’s answer to these questions is so profoundly simple and obvious, and was exactly what I needed to hear:
Our first business has not to do with faith, but with Christ. Come, I beseech you, on Calvary’s mount, and see the cross. Behold the Son of God, he who made the heavens and the earth, dying for your sins. Look to him, is there not power in him to save? Look at his face so full of pity. Is there not love in his heart to prove him willing to save? Sure sinner, the sight of Christ will help thee to believe. Do not believe first, and then go to Christ, or else thy faith will be a worthless thing; go to Christ without any faith, and cast thyself upon him, sink or swim.
Saved by Grace
If we think it is our belief or our faith that saves us, we are the same as those who believe they are saved by the good works they do. By worrying about my lack of belief, I was putting my faith in myself rather than in Jesus! It is not by the power of my own faith that I am saved; it is by the power of Jesus Christ who gave Himself for me on the cross that I am saved!
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8, NIV)
No action of my own can save me. I don’t need to feel like I’m in the right frame of mind to go to Jesus. I don’t need to be presentable enough or faithful enough or even remotely perfect. Jesus knows who I am inside and out, even more than I know myself. There isn’t some threshold of holiness I need to cross before I’m really saved. Simply by the act of “coming in” and asking Jesus to save me, I have been saved. Not because I did something. But because He did.
