Tough Times

I lost my job this past Friday. My boss let me go over the phone. In short, I was pulled into her office after a meeting and was sat down only to have explained to me that I apparently falsified information. I believe sincerely it was set up and she wanted me out. It is in God's hands and quite frankly, I am glad I am out of the hospital. There were many things that were hindering me from really following God and allowing me to draw close to Him.

This entire job loss, though, was really a test of my faith. I was doing an exegesis paper for my OT class. I selected my paper on the binding of Isaac because I thought it would be simple. God had other plans. You see, this paper was due Thursday and the meeting I had was that night. While I was working on the paper, I got a call from my boss. She told me she wanted to talk to me. I was freaking out wondering what was wrong. I finished the exegesis paper, turned it in, ran into a teacher who I absolutely loved because he was so kind and generous, and went to my last class for the evening never really thinking anything of the paper or the teacher. I was, however, panicking because of the phone call. I went to the meeting, my boss talked to me, told me the story, and I went home. I told my parents what happened and we prayed. As soon as I started praying, the gears started to turn. I thought of the paper I just wrote. I thought about how much faith and trust it took for Abraham to take Isaac, his ONLY son, as God puts it "your only son whom you love", and put him on the altar to sacrifice him. No questions asked. Only, faith, trust, and obedience. Awesome. I was literally blown away as I was praying and all I could think about was how blessed I was. God gave me the strength to really focus on the tasks at hand. He gave me the faith and I trusted Him. I obeyed Him. Has it been rough for the past several days getting grips on reality? Of course! Do I worry about my coworkers and what they think of me because I am gone? Of course! I really don't need to because ultimately, God knows best. For that, I am humbly grateful for His understanding, mercy, and grace.

God puts trials into our lives to make us stronger, to increase our faith, our trust, our obedience. Don't look at the bad times as punishment as the world says we need to. There are countless stories in the Bible about God's children having their faith and trust increased from Job losing everything and his friends trying to make him doubt God to David, the man after God's own heart, and the many tragedies that he had in the Bible. Never give up on God because He never gave up on you.