The apostle’s example of pressing on after devastating setbacks will do your heart good
3 min read
When you encounter a series of setbacks or unexpected hardships in your faith journey (notice the when – not if), it can be very difficult to keep going, much less to keep moving with enthusiasm. These experiences can leave you in a state of disenchantment with people and frustration in your relationship with God.
What to do?
Something that can really help in a moment like this is to consider the example of faithful role models. Whether it’s someone you are close to, or someone you’ve just heard about, there’s nothing like a story of resilience to lift your spirits.
In 2 Corinthians 11, for example, the Apostle Paul listed some of the hard things he faced in his work as one of the first Christian missionaries:
“Five times I received from the Jews forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with a rod. Once I received a stoning. Three times I suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I spent adrift in the open sea.” 2 Corinthians 11:24-25
Quite a resume, huh?
Notice Paul’s mention of the time he was stoned. Mind you, there was no cannabis involved in this stoning. Paul was actually stoned with rocks. This was done by a group of people who mistakenly believed Paul was disrespecting God as he preached the Gospel. They didn’t believe that Jesus was actually the Messiah or the Son of God, so they treated Paul as if he were a blasphemer.
The scene is described in Acts 14:19-20:
Then some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowds to their side. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of town, thinking he was dead.
After the stoning, it looked as though Paul had died from his injuries…appearing to be a lifeless corpse. As far as they knew, the man talking about salvation through Jesus was history.
And the adversary, the devil, probably breathed a sigh of relief too. Paul, the passionate evangelist for Jesus and the point person for spreading the Gospel to the world was dead. The demons could chill for a minute. Or so they thought.
Notice what happened next:
But as the believers gathered around him, he got up and went back into the town...
Turns out, Paul was not dead. Bloodied, bruised, and unconscious maybe, but not dead. Like a scene from an action movie, imagine the suprise of those who had left him for dead when they saw him walking back into town.
Friend, if you find yourself in a difficult section of your faith journey, consider what you just read. Think about how God gave Paul the grace and strength to get back up after what he went through, after the beatdown he had sustained.
This is resilience at its best.
And here’s the application. The same God that helped Paul is also present to help us get back up after we’ve been pelted by difficult circumstances of all kinds. When we’ve been flattened by adversity – be it our own failures, the unkindness of people, or just a bad situation that we have no explanation for – the example of Paul beautifully illustrates that whether we stay down or not is up to us.
There’s nothing like a story of resilience to lift your spirits.
Like Paul, could it be that one of the best things that could ever be said about us is that we got back up and that we kept getting back up? In my opinion, that’s the ultimate compliment.
Friend, may God be glorified every time you rise after something in this crazy world lays you flat.
It’s a new day with God. Run with it.
