When will it end? This is the question many of us are asking Heavenly Father. We are perplexed by the magnitude of spiritual warfare we’re facing, because it is beyond the level of anything we’ve encountered in the past. And not only are our problems complex, they are compounded by the agitation of not knowing what more we can do to help ourselves. Before, when things went haywire, we had a reasonable amount of confidence that with the Father’s help, we could use our intellect to work out a solution, but the evil of today’s environment is unprecedented. Any believer with some degree of spiritual maturity knows there’s something huge happening in the spiritual realm, and through every crisis we’re experiencing, God is preparing us for what is to come.
So the critical question is “how do I respond to the continuation of a crisis?” To begin to answer this question, we must go to Isaiah 40:31(NLT) and ingest its instruction and encouragement by slowly chewing on its truth. This verse says, “But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.” We can clearly see in this wonderful piece of yumminess, that our Heavenly Father knows about the difficulties that His children face. There isn’t one detail of our lives that He doesn’t know about. We belong to Him. He’s our owner and our Lord, and within a fraction of the time it takes to blink an eye, He can quiet any storm of life we may be facing.
You might look at your storm and think to yourself, “Well, this thing has been going on for quite some time, and I don’t see things getting any better.” Sometimes it appears this way, but we have no idea of all the things God is working out in the background. Trouble doesn’t last always, but it does come. It stays longer than any of us would like, but we can’t allow troubles and problems to cause us to doubt God’s willingness to bless us. He’s able! Those before us, our grandmothers and grandfathers, and indeed those before them, endured hardships that were much more severe than ours, but they made it through. They didn’t have the revelation and biblical teaching that you and I have received, but still they believed the Word they were taught wholeheartedly, and they trusted God to help them.
Don’t do it!
Don’t let the complexities and challenges of your situation cause you to question God’s love, power, and wisdom. The first part of Isaiah 40:31 says that those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. Old strength got us through yesterday and the day before. Things may not have been easy, but we’re still here! Our Heavenly Father knows that it wasn’t easy. That’s why He leads us to new strength, to reservoirs untapped. It’s a waste of precious time to complain about our conditions or to blame anyone for the situations we find ourselves in. God tells us in Lamentations 3:23 that His mercies are new every morning. We must stop trying to move forward by operating off yesterday’s provision of mercy and strength. Heavenly Father has something new that awaits us, and we need to be inspired in hope, because hope helps us to soar high on wings like eagles.
Learning to soar
A big part of the new strength we’ll find is revealed in the lessons we learn through the storms of life. If asked, many of us would say that we’ve learned to maneuver through life, but maneuvering doesn’t always allow us to see victory. God wants us to mount up with wings like an eagle! When an eagle first leaves the ground, it mounts to gain altitude by flapping its wings. This flapping takes energy and effort. The Lord wants to teach us through the Spirit of Christ within to utilize energy and effort wisely. In the past, we didn’t do this. We allowed fear to steer us. It paralyzed our flight and kept us bound to the ground. It didn’t allow us to mount. We must crucify this fear, and God will help us to do it. The problems and troubles we’re enduring are costly, but whatever the cost, whatever we need, God’s got it and He’ll give us the strength to overcome.
The wonderful lesson
2Corinthians 4:17(NLT) says, “For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!” Do you believe this? Many of us say we do, but we’re so easily discouraged. An eagle can detect a storm before it comes and will fly to a high spot to wait for the winds. When the storm winds blow, it sets its wings so that the winds will lift it above the storm. This is one of the lessons God is teaching us. When the storm winds blow, our faith in Heavenly Father must rise above them, because our faith in Him will cause us to mount up and soar. God made sure that the storms would not overcome the eagle, and if we place our confidence and trust in Him, He won’t allow them to overcome us either.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“When Will It End?”, written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2019. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.