Recently I've been reading a short teaching written by Charles Swindoll. To sum up, he talks about attitude, that 10% of your life is what actually happens to you, and 90% is how you react to these things.

The book of James describes something similar on how we should be acting when difficulties come along, that we should show love, humility and patience. It talks about how we will all go through testing times as a Christian, but that we should consider it pure joy to go through these. I know that this might sound a bit strange, especially since we all know God wants the best for us, but James goes on to say that going through these hard times and staying close to God makes our faith and friendship with God much stronger. So the next time it happens you know how to deal with it and have more faith to pull you through.

When we look at it like that, it's actually an exciting privilege to go through hard times because it's God himself who wants you to be stronger in yourself, and become closer to him.

I've really had to hold on to James' teaching during hard times, but I'm already seeing a quicker recovery rate if I keep my attitude right and let God deal with the problem!

Read James yourself and see how giving your problems to God and staying positive can change your life!

back...