Overcoming Challenges

Photo Credit: Michele Husfelt

by Katie Harding on June 3, 2024

Are you ever bothered when your plans don’t go as expected, when the computer doesn’t operate as it should, or friends don’t respond as you wish? What if all these challenges weren’t intended to make your days more difficult but to test your ability to maintain your peace? How would you fair?

God doesn’t cause challenges to agitate us, punish us, or pay us back for not doing our devotions. But God will allow challenges because challenges can refine us and help us learn how to maintain peace even though the pathway might be full of rocky patches.

Our Father’s intention is not to have us look good, do good, and be good. The Father’s desire is to have us look like Christ. He wants us to learn to endure – to bring our thoughts, words, and heart into alignment with His. He wants us not to gripe or retaliate when others make our days tough. He wants us to learn to praise Him despite our difficulties and to keep our peace “even when…”

I think we all desire peace. In fact, we often pray for peace and want to keep our peace, but we want it without any problems. It can’t be done. It’s in the midst of problems we learn to persevere. That’s why Jesus experienced temptation when He fasted for forty days in the wilderness. He was strengthening His ability to persevere and maintain peace. If we want to learn how to keep our peace in the midst of disappointments, we need to experience disappointment. If we want to learn how to keep our peace in the midst of frustrations, we need to experience frustration, and if we want to learn how to keep our peace even when we are rejected, we need to experience rejection. It’s when we encounter trouble that our perseverance is tested.

Before going to the cross, Jesus said, “In this world you will have persecution…” But right before that, He said something we often miss. “I have said this [these things] to you, so that in me you may have peace.” We often focus on the second sentence without looking at the first. However, when we put these two sentences together, we realize Jesus wasn’t giving us a statement about pressure, anguish, or trouble as persecution can be translated in Greek; He was giving us a comparison of life in Him versus life in the world. In Him peace. In the world, problems.

But He said, “Take courage, I have conquered the world.”

Courage is not what we experience instead of fear, but it’s what we demonstrate despite our fear. And Jesus tells us to take courage because it’s actually fear coupled with unmet expectations that give rise to anger, as I learned years ago from author James Bryan Smith. Anger in its milder form often resembles irritation or frustration or in other words, challenges, but Jesus tells us to take courage because He has conquered the world. He was able to maintain peace while facing all kinds of anguish, and if we remain in Him, we can too. We can experience peace even when we experience problems. In Him — with Him at the center of our lives and our lives centered on Him, we can develop the strength to persevere AND learn to keep our peace. In Him, we can overcome challenges.

Scripture Reference: John 16:33