Enduring Through Suffering

How often do we put time constraints on how God can work in our lives? I do this all the time and just realized that I even put restrains on how long I will "allow" Him to let me suffer. We KNOW from the Bible that suffering will be a part of our journey. We KNOW that the Christian life is not easy, however we never expect that it will be in God's plan for us to suffer for a long time. I never expected that God would allow me to suffer for more than 6 months over something. Now that it's been more than 6 months and I'm still having a hard time, it has caused me to question what God is doing. The real question is why would I tell God what He can and cannot do in my life? I met an amazing woman last week who has endured losing her 11 year old daughter to cancer. She has been in pain for over a year with grief and she never told God how much she could handle or when He had to take the pain away. It all comes down to releasing our will and trusting our God. I have such a problem with both of those! I didn't even realize that I put limits on how much I thought God would allow me to suffer until now. Our God knows best. These are the words that I have cycled through my mind over and over again as I try to understand. Somewhere along the time we were deceived in our Christian lives to believe that "good" Christians do not have to deal with great suffering or difficulty. This is NOT true. God doesn't love you less when you are going through something hard. Try not to put a time constraint on your trials because sometimes the lessons we have to learn take a LONG time.   Photo credit: Helga Weber