Finding God in Hardship: Questions to Shift Your Perspective

Friends, and welcome back to Faithfield Woman.

This is your host, Kristin.

Today's a mini episode and I am going to propose to you a couple new questions you can ask yourself when things just aren't going right, when things feel hard, when we have loss, and when, as Bob Goff says, it feels like God has gone below the surface.

Welcome to Faith Fueled Woman, a podcast designed for Christian women eager to deepen their faith and shine God's light in every aspect of their lives.

Each week we'll delve into practical strategies, inspiring stories and biblical wisdom to equip you with the tools you need to navigate life's challenges and grow deeper in your faith.

From finding calm in the chaos, forming deep Christian friendships, to everyday ways to connect with God.

We'll cover it all.

Hi, I'm your host, Kristin.

I'm an encourager, a faith led entrepreneur, a mom, and a wife.

Let's be encouraged in our everyday lives as we let our faith guide us, fuel us, and fill us with God's incredible peace, wisdom and joy in our lives.

Friends, it's still early in the first month of this year and already there's just so much heaviness in our country and in the world.

But in our country, we had the shooting in New Orleans on New Year's.

We have these horrific fires happening in the Los Angeles area, Los Angeles county, and they're the devastation has just been immeasurable.

And you know, of course, this is above and beyond what each of us might be walking through in our own lives or our loved ones might be walking through hard things that we often have to go through.

For some of us, it's loss or remembering loved ones that have gone before.

It could be health issues.

It could just be we're struggling in one of our relationships.

Maybe we have a strained relationship with one of our children or one of our siblings or a parent.

So we all have things that weigh on us or are tough to walk through.

And one of the devotionals that I'm reading this year is, I've mentioned it before, but it's called Catching Whimsy by Bob Goff.

So it's a 365 day devotional.

What I love about him, though is the title.

Obviously it's already fun Catching Whimsy.

And it's about 360 days of possibility.

And why I love it is sometimes when we're talking about our faith and we're talking about scripture and devotionals, they can seem very serious and heavy.

And I love that he brings that sense of playfulness that Sense of, you know, we're doing the best we can and let's just show up for each other and let's let God show up for us.

And so on January 9th of his devotional, which was yesterday's reading, he.

It's just a really good one.

And he says here, he basically says, here's some questions to ask instead of asking, you know, like, where is God?

In other words, when we're going through these hard things, we might often think like, how could God let this happen?

Or why is this happening, God?

Or how am I going to get through this?

And he shares John 9:1:3, which is basically the scripture, that there's a blind man and Jesus asks him, you know, what he wants him to do for him.

And he basically takes, he takes the mud and he makes the blind man see.

Well, actually John 9:1:3 is actually the disciples asking, what is it the blind man's fault or the parents fault?

So sorry, that's actually what that scripture says.

But it's about the blind man that Jesus takes mud and spits on and then wipes it on his eyes and he's able to see.

Okay, so that's what it's in reference to.

But God's saying is, I'm sorry, Bob says, so many people say, I mean, in that, in that statement, they said, what caused this man to be blind who sinned?

And Bob says, I think the question would be, why did you just talk some spit and rub mud in the poor guy's eyes?

But he said, what if we change the questions we asked?

And the two questions that really stood out for me that he is posing, that we should ask ourselves is, what is Jesus doing in our lives?

What is he doing in this circumstance, right?

In this thing we're walking through?

And then also ask, what is he going to do next?

And the thing is, is if we have our sights set on where is Jesus in this, we'd stop focusing on only the struggle.

And we look to him.

We look to him one, for strength.

But two, we look to him for where is he at play?

Because we already know God is already at work, right?

Which is what his devotional is about this particular day.

And he ends with saying this, you know, he, he shares Luke, let me see here.

In the Book of Acts, Luke is sharing with a friend that we should look for many convincing proofs that Jesus is still alive.

And so Bob goes on to explain what, what if instead of wondering why things are happening, you gave the question a twist and said, maybe these things are happening.

So the works of God could be put on display in my life.

What might he be doing now and what might he be doing next?

How good is that?

And he also shares in this devotion, this particular day's devotional.

He's looking for God, looking for us to come to him in our truest, most authentic selves.

In other words, he's not looking for us to pretend or to play a part which most of us may feel like happens in our lives.

Not because we're trying to, but because we are human and because we're trying to fit in and we're trying to appease people, possibly, or whatever the reasons might be.

But we tend to, you know, say, like, for instance, if somebody says to you, like, oh, how you doing?

Well, a lot of times we're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm fine.

Which we may or may not be completely, completely fine.

But it's just small talk talk.

We're not getting deep into it with, you know, just anyone.

But he reminds us that God is saying, come to me as you are.

Come to me with what you're dealing with.

Come to me what's heavy on your heart.

And we have to remember that, you know, God isn't just asking us to come to him when things are hard.

Often many of us seek him out when things are hardest and when things are going well, some of us don't seek him out as much.

He wants us to have a relationship with him and seek him out always.

But especially when we're going through hard things.

We want to go to God, but we also want to look for where he is working in these circumstances.

It may be because we're going to take that pain and in the future have a different perspective.

It could be that we're going to help other people that are walking later on, walking through what we just walked through.

It could be that there's so many helpers and people that are around us to support us and love us in ways we didn't even imagine could happen.

The next thing I want to share with you is when we start asking different questions, we don't just shift our mindset.

We start shifting our perspective and we shift our heart a bit.

In the.

In one of the books that Edith Bieber wrote called the Gift.

And I believe she's a psychologist.

She also is someone that, as a child or a young teen, was in concentration camps, and most of her family died there.

But she's lived in the United States for many, many decades.

And so in her book, she says this.

In my experience, Victims ask, why me?

Survivors ask, what now?

So once again, it's a shift in questions.

Instead of asking, why am I going through this?

Why am I, why did this happen?

And I should caveat that with saying, I'm not saying, you can't.

We shouldn't ask questions.

What I'm saying is then we need to move beyond only those questions and add additional questions.

So start asking, what's next?

What now?

So not only what is God or what is Jesus doing next?

What are we to do now?

And then what are we do to do next?

And she also says this victimhood is rigor mortis of the mind.

It's stuck in the past, stuck in the pain and stuck in the.

On the losses and deficits, what I can't do and what I don't have.

And that's why she's saying, as we do the work to heal, as we do the work to feel our loss or our pain.

Because of course, we're not saying we should not experience that.

But then we need to shift to what now?

And I just thought, that's so good.

And it really ties in with what Bob's saying about looking to see what is Jesus doing?

What is he doing now, even in my circumstances or in my pain, and what is he doing next?

What is he up to?

And where can we see him working in our life, even through the hard days?

And then I want to share this quote with you.

Its faith can begin as simply as that.

If we are wondering where God is in our daily lives, perhaps we can start by noticing the holy all around us every day.

That's by Kathy Izzard from Trust the Whisper.

But friends, even in hard things, for instance, everyone in the LA area that is experiencing fear, they're experiencing loss, right?

So many of them have lost their.

Their livelihood, their homes, their buildings, their whole communities.

They've been uprooted and had to quickly flee to find somewhere to stay.

So this is a very hard thing.

And it's a lot of people that are being impacted.

It's not going.

In other words, they're still going to have to walk through that difficulty, that loss of so many things, of somehow figuring out how to put their lives back together, to getting the support they need, to coming together as communities to fix things once the fires are contained and they can actually see all the devastation in front of them.

I know some of them have already gone back to their areas and seen just total streets burned down.

But in the midst of all that, the question is, where is Jesus?

Or where is God at work in all of this.

Meaning I've seen people already coming together, you know, people, you know, already donating money, and it doesn't make their pain any less.

It doesn't make what they're going to have to go through any easier.

But it starts showing us that we come together, that we can love each other, we can support each other.

Good does come from even the ashes.

It doesn't mean that anyone would ever wish that.

So as we wrap up today, I just want to remind you, let's look for what is God doing even in hard circumstances?

What is he up to now and what is he up to next?

But we also need to ask ourselves similar questions, which is, what now for ourselves?

What am I supposed to do in this moment, in this time?

Then also what am I supposed to do now?

In other words, what am I setting my sights on and moving towards?

And so I hope this, these simple shifting questions help you see that we can have a different perspective and we can show up a little differently in the world when we focus less on our circumstances and more on who and what is around us.

How can we be the helper?

And how can we notice the people helping and loving us as well?

And obviously God is weaving it all together through it all.

Until next time, I hope you have a great thanks again for listening to the show and and if you enjoyed today's episode, we would love it if you could take a minute to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast because it helps our show get discovered by more people.

And if you'd like to be encouraged in your faith and in your Life, go onto KristenFitch.com and sign up to get my newsletter.

I have lots of freebies and lots of inspiration encouragement that'll be coming your way and I would love it if you joined part of our community.