Surviving the Storms of Life.

Many of you have had some devastating circumstances that have felt like the heart was being torn out of your chest during this past year.

How do people withstand the storms that has sunk the ship and also threatened to sink the lifeboat that they depended on for their survival? The wind, the waves of adversity, the surges of heartbreak one after another. How do they survive? How can they be so strong at their extreme weakest?

Somewhere in the middle of their storm, God's voice was telling them that He provides sufficient grace for this trial, and when you am weak He is always and still very strong.

"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me... For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). Well, here I am - present and accounted for. It's the hard times and the unhealthy times and the hurting times that reveal my weaknesses. And it's also during those times that God shows up strong.

We often treat suffering like a dodgeball game. Anytime anything painful comes at us, we jump out of the way. We spend our whole lives trying to avoid anything that will hurt or be hard. But there's a better kind of life - a deeper, more fulfilling kind of life - that isn't about avoiding every pain. It's about finding God faithful and powerful in the midst of whatever thorns He allows.

There's something about our weakness that opens the flow of God's strength.

When you are in the midst of a trial, there's a power coming into your life that you've never experienced before. When you see a hard thing coming, try saying, "I may not want this, but I know I'm going to see Christ working in my life in an incredible way."

God never allows a thorn but that He provides sufficient grace and strength in our weaknesses. Sufficient grace is not just enough to survive, but enough to have supernatural joy in the midst of anything He allows us to go through.

Let your hope and trust in God elevate you to victory and learn the lesson he may want you to as you go through the storm and come out on the other side victorious.