Are you feeling defeated, hopeless, or on the edge of despair? Have you ever asked yourself these questions: “Why is my life full of challenges day after day? When are things going to get better for me and my family? Why didn’t this situation turn around for me like I expected? When, Lord, are you going to help me?”
We have so much in common! These are the questions I would ask myself when I was hanging onto the knot at the end of my rope…hoping things would get better.
In the 18 months after I graduated secretarial school, I moved through five jobs and found myself raising my right hand repeating the oath to defend our country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This oath led me 2,400 miles away from home in basic training at the age of 19, sitting under a pine tree reading Hebrews 11 in my little, green, Gideon pocket testament. My favorite verse was Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
With no support system of family or friends, the only person I could turn to for encouragement, wisdom, and protection was the God I found in my pocket testament. I learned the greatest lessons of faith while attending basic training and learned to believe what Jesus said in those books of the Bible were actually true. If He said he would do something, He would do it. If He said I could have something, I could have it.
Twenty-nine years ago I took another step of faith to pack up my life into a moving truck and move my new life to Alabama from Idaho after my first husband passed away. This adventure, like the basic training adventure, gave me countless opportunities to walk by faith when I married a virtual stranger, and promptly gave birth to four children in five years. I believed God would provide for our family. I chose to walk by faith and not be moved when we sold one house to buy another house, only to lose it to foreclosure when the economy bottomed out. I chose to walk by faith again when we lost our vehicle to repossession.
These house and car situations hurt my pride and caused me to walk in shame until I gained more revelation from God’s Word. And this past summer, because I chose to focus on God’s promises, I was able to walk through the emotions of grief that came from losing both parents and my sweet mother-in-law within a nine-month period.
Fast forward to today…40 years since those days under the pine trees reading my pocket testament…I’m still walking by faith! Second Corinthians 5:7 tells us “We walk by faith and not by sight.” I’ve had multiple opportunities to lose hope and let go of my faith because of situations in my life, but I choose everyday to believe what the Bible – the Word of God – says is true for my life.
Life happens to all us! How we handle these situations and circumstances determines if we will walk in victory. I choose to walk by faith and stand on God’s promises everyday! His Word tells us that we can have the desires of heart because we have a covenant with Him, and that covenant includes restoration, provision, healing, joy, peace, increase, and much more!
Because I set my mind long ago to walk by faith and not give up when life got hard, God has been faithful to His Word! He’s restored to our lives. He’s blessed us beyond measure with a home, multiple vehicles and finances so we can be a blessing to others. God Is Always Faithful!