When nothing seems to be going your way

What do you do when nothing seems to be going your way? How do you react? What do you feel? How do you handle those feelings?

I want to briefly address these things and how we as Christians can approach life when nothing is going our way…

Does this sound anything like you:

Things start to go awry in life…One set back after another seems to come your way…your emotions get frazzled…the crazy thoughts of discouragement and defeat set in…and you wonder if you will ever be able to get out of this mess…

So what should we do? 

I  know that chocolate, ice cream and coffee are favorite ways for us to “cope” but does that really help the situation, our emotions or our overall health? 

No, it really doesn’t. If anything, “coping” in these ways often have unintended (and unhealthy) side-effects.

Another temptation is to handle the spiraling situations by redoubling your efforts, working extra hard, doing “whatever it takes” but all the while still doing it of your own effort, wisdom and supply. 

Here are 3 quick and simple (not easy, just simple) things that you can do to address a life spinning out of control:

1. Stop. Breathe. Pray. Rest: To continue living, talking, working, planning at full speed and under the limited strength and wisdom that we have is foolish, dangerous and perhaps deadly. We need to stop. Take a deep breath. Remember the promises of God’s Word. Remember that God is bigger, stronger, wiser. Pray and give it to God and then rest in His presence fully assured and aware that He is good, He is willing and He is able to get us through.

2. Go to a quiet place. Let it out. Sing to God. Read some Scripture: Don’t allow yourself to continue fretting, analyzing and replaying the situation(s) over in your head. Only a fresh perspective (from God’s vantage point) is going to help you to overcome. Turning off the phone, the news, the social media and the 1000 other yelling voices so that you can focus on God’s love messages is vitally important. If the only quiet place you can find is in your car with the radio off, do it! But if you can find a sanctuary, closet or prayer room, even better.
   
3. After prayer, do something, however small, in obedience to what God has said: It may be that God says “Don’t worry, trust me” or perhaps He reveals something tangible and practical that you need to be doing to address the problem(s). Maybe He just wants you to work on something else or help someone else. I don’t know what God will say to you, but whether you can see the big picture or not or whether what God tells you makes perfect sense or not, just do it, and wait/watch for His hand at work.

I’m not trying to downplay whatever serious, difficult and perhaps painful thing you are going through, but if you read this far you are obviously searching for what to do (when you don’t really know what to do) so I hope you will give these three things a genuine and wholehearted try and I pray that you will soon be on the other side of this difficult season you are in.