What Does Your Testimony Point To?

If we have lived in this life long enough, most of us have dealt with storms that have threatened to overwhelm us. We've all heard the saying, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle," or "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." We often question as believers where was God when our world came crashing down. Perhaps it was the loss of a job that has now placed you in precarious financial difficulty not knowing how you will make it from one month to another while the bills keep pouring in and unexpected situations come up when you need them the least. Maybe you have lost someone you love, a spouse, a child, a family member of some sort or a close friend. Now you wonder where God was when He could have healed them or prevented them from dying? Maybe you are watching your marriage disintegrate right before your eyes, taking that future love and hope with it, destroying your family and children in the process. Or perhaps its something you have done, that you are now dealing with the regrets of that decision, wishing you could go back and do it differently?

Why?

Why does God permit these situations to occur when clearly He can do something to prevent them from happening?

Someone once quoted, that God surely thinks I am one strong person, because He keeps giving me things I didn't think I could deal with.

But I believe that are to help others not only in their walk of faith, but to point others to God in the process.

Think about all the storms you have endured...you survived every single one. You made it through the other side.

Sure you may have been battered and bruised and barely breathing when you emerged, but you survived.

All the things we go through are meant to help us move from one stage of life to another and to help others move along as well. We show people that we might be barely hanging on getting through it minute by minute, but we are moving through it.

These all become part of our testimony. Our way of being able to share with people what it's like to have gone through it all and made it out the other side.

It is encouraging for people to see we can make it.

I know looking back on every single situation, often times decades later, every time I went through a storm, big or small God has EVERY SINGLE time, used it for good, for His glory and for me to be able to shine the light on Him.

From enduring an abortion at 17 and living with the bitterness and pain for 30 years later, God would give me a way to share that story to an adopted son who was questioning his own birth mother giving him up for adoption and thus struggling with forgiveness for her.

For realizing that despite a tough divorce and custody battle that created such heart break, I never thought I would survive by a man who was a Christian, who ultimately moved my only child at the time 3000 miles away keeping me from seeing her unless I wanted to pay to see her or wait for summer visits. I can now share with other parents and wives going through the same thing, you can survive. God will restore things to you if you remain faithful. Possibly not with the same person, but with someone you didn't even see coming that would bless your life in countless ways.

For enduring not only one job loss, but multiple ones, back to back that left us with the struggle of making our house payments and keeping our electricity on. We watched as God's accounting worked miracles that even looking back by staying diligent with our tithes to the church and believing God will work it out, we never lost anything, not even our home during the process.

When a bad loan threatened to take the home we worked so hard to keep during the financial downturn in 2008 and my husbands loss of a job within a week of that, God not only found us a better home, cheaper payments and restored a job to my husband that literally was twice as good as the one he left behind.

In all of it, our faith has wavered at times, but we never gave up believing in the midst of what we couldn't see, God did see and would bring us through it time and time again. It is so we can continually remind others, encourage others that God is always there. He will use it ALL for his good and His glory and without a doubt, you will come through it all if you are willing to hold on and keep your faith.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." ~ Philippians 4:13

I would love to know your testimony and how you made it through your storm if you would love to share it with me in the comment box below. If you are going through a storm right now, let me know how I can pray for you. I'd be most honored!