Sometimes when hard things come into our lives, they take the best from us. Long lasting trials can drain us and wear us out. Our initial energy and faith gets slowly depleted until we find ourselves flat, hopeless and defeated. All that I can! attitude gets replaced with I can’t and I don’t want to apathy.
When a parent is ill for a long time, it can take the best from us. When a teenager is in full blown rebellion, it can take the best from us. When we lose a job, or our spouse does; when we deal with a chronic illness or are stuck in what feels like a dead end job or relationship – all of that can take the best from us.
Long lasting hard stuff sucks out all our optimism and drops off bitterness, anger or hopelessness instead. Our best hopes, best intentions and best efforts seem lost and squashed. But God wants the best for us, so it surely can’t be His intention that the hard stuff takes the best from us.
Can it really be His best plan? Can it really be the best thing for us – at least eventually?
God can use even the worst for our best if we choose to take the best from it rather than let it take the best from us.
Let’s face it – there are just some things in our lives that are not “best,” but we can certainly turn it for our good! Sometimes we need to perform a bit of holy theft and squeeze what we can out of the intruder that threatens to steal our joy.
Since I live with blindness every single day of my life, I have had to lean on God’s grace to learn how to squeeze God’s best from blindness rather than let it steal the best from me. So, here are two ways I am constantly learning to do just that!
1.Take the best from it
Even bad situations can offer some good benefits. Can you focus on the good things or qualities or outcomes that have resulted from that hard thing you deal with? For example, blindness isn’t good. But when I choose to squeeze the best out of it, I find that it has developed in me a greater dependence on God – that is best.
Whatever you deal with, I promise you this principle is true. If you squeeze the best from your hard situation, it cannot steal the best from you and it cannot diminish the best of you. Ask God to reveal the benefits of what you deal with and then take the best from it – steal it, hog it, grab it and do not let go!!
2. Make the best of it
We’ve all heard this. We need to make the best of our circumstances. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, how? And why? Well, the why is this: if you don’t make the best of it, you will only experience the worst of it. For me, with blindness, if I do not make the best of it, I will only experience the loneliness, isolation and frustration of it. And that is just plain dumb – counter productive!
You are way to valuable to let that hard thing ruin your life. That is why you learn to make the best of it.
How do you make the best of a bad situation? Choose to make it a pathway instead of a dead end. It is as simple and as difficult as a choice. We just have to decide that this hard thing will get us to a better place. This hard thing will not be the end of our joy or peace. To make the best of it means we choose to see it as part of God’s best plan for us.
God has plans for you.
He has plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11) Sometimes the path to that hope and future is bumpy and winding and rough. To make the best of what you deal with, see it as a pathway God has provided to get you to where He wants you to be so you will experience His best plan for you.
You, like Joseph, can say with full assurance, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. (Genesis 50:20)
What good can you find in your difficult situation today? Please share in the comments below.
