Having strength

Sometimes God sends trials into our life; trials that seem impossible, unbearable, and we honestly wonder how we'll ever make it out of them alive. So often I find myself asking, "God, please please please, just make this easier for me. Then I can handle it." I don't think that's necessarily the right way to go about things. God does give us trials for a reason, and I think we should ask Him to make us strong enough to bear the trials, not just make them easier. 

John F. Kennedy once said: "Do not ask for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men."

That quote has inspired me SO much. Often, when faced with something hard in my life, it is so much easier to ask God just to make things easier. But instead, I want to ask Him to make me stronger. That's what trials do... they make us stronger. Trials and hard times in life aren't meant to just make us weaker and weaker. Sometimes they do tear us down... but only for a while. Ultimately, they make us so much stronger. Hopefully they build our faith and make our trust in God more firm. God uses our trials for many different reasons. I have seen Him use our trials to reach other people, to test us, to show His power. And yes, sometimes we don't know WHY God puts things in our lives. It's hard to know. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

In ALL things, God will work for our good, even if it doesn't always seem like it. We should also keep in mind that God never sends us a trial that is too hard for us. 

Francis de Sales once said: "The everlasting God has in His wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His inmost heart. This cross He now sends you He has considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His divine mind, tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighed with His own hands to see that it be not one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with His holy Name, anointed it with His grace, perfumed it with His consideration, taken one last glance at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from Heaven, a special greeting from God to you..." 

Yes, God sends us crosses to bear. But they will never EVER be too heavy for us.

The next time something hard comes into your life... don't ask God to just make it easier. Ask Him to make you stronger. He will. He always works everything out for our own good, even though we can't always see His purpose at the very beginning.