Be Encouraged by God’s
Gift of Hope in Times of Struggle
Kristiana shares how 2020 was a year of struggle, but in the middle of the struggle, God gave her the strength to accept His gift of hope and is leading her to trust Him.
Right around the time quarantine began, I began really struggling with faith and whether or not God really loved everyone. I struggled with reading the Bible. Every time I would read it I would find something that I thought meant that God didn’t love everyone and I would obsess about it.
However, throughout this whole time, God was near me. He gave me my parent’s loving support; they would talk with me for hours until I could find the peace to move on and I know they prayed for me throughout the entire experience.
God gave me Lectio 365, a prayer/devotion app, that He used and is still using to gently lead me back to reading His word. One of the defining moments in this experience where I knew He was going to lead me out of this is when my family and I were watching church and we sang the song “Hidden” by United Pursuit and Will Reagan. The song speaks of God leading the singer to trust Him and being hidden in His love. I knew when we sang that song that God was going to lead me to trust in Him.
Now, I still struggled for a while after that and to some extent am still struggling to fully trust that He is good and loving, but He gave me the hope I needed to keep on going through that song. I think that is one of the gifts He has given us this year: hope. I don’t think hope is just a feeling; I think it is a choice to accept the gift He has given us even if our emotions don’t match up.
In 2020, God gave me the strength to accept His gift of hope and He leads me and is leading me to trust Him.
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