2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
Well, things have been quite interesting in my life on the job front. It has been a VERY big test of my faith too. However, I have learned a lot. For those of you who do not know, I will start at the beginning. I lost my job the first of December of 2006. I struggled for about 6 months to find a job and finally did. I started working at Tara Treatment Center. I thought this was an answer to prayer! And in many ways it was. I believe it was where God wanted me to be for two known reasons to me and those are to meet my friend Sarah (who has been such a blessing in my life in many ways) and for one of the clients who turned her life over to Jesus. However, after I got the job, shortly after, I started looking for a new job because Tara does not provide benefits. They found out and cut my hours from 40 hours a week to 12! Well, I can not support myself on that, let alone a child! So, once again the process of looking for a new job began.
During this time I kept getting very angry with God. I didn't understand why He was not supplying me with my much needed job. I had even talked to Sarah about how I was even getting frustrated because I kept seeing all these people around me, who weren't even Christians, getting jobs and here I was struggling so bad. Oooohhh...I was getting mad. I just kept saying, "I don't understand it"! I had applied for probably over 100 jobs in the time I had been off work. What I have come to realize though is it is very easy to have faith that God has everything under control in the good times. The bad times, however, are a little different. I started off thinking He had everything under control. But as the months passed....and passed...and passed. I started to wonder, and ultimately started to doubt. We had a church service the other day that really spoke to me. The whole thing! After that church services I decided that who am I to judge and/or say when and if God provides me a job or not? Either way I should continue in my faith and praise him with or without a job. I asked for forgiveness for being so angry and doubting. And I laid it in His hands. Then on Wednesday at church I started thinking (as we studied James) of the movie Facing the Giants. The part (for those of you who have seen it) where the coach (the main character) says "If we win, we will praise Him. If we lose, we will praise Him." That is how it should be. If I have a job, I should praise Him. But even if I don't have a job, I should praise Him.
This has definitely been a journey for me. One of growth and maturity and faith. Well, this week I had two job offers. Both VERY good jobs. It was a very difficult decision, but I believe that I chose the right one. The other job I wanted, but it was not in my field of study and I just prayed that if it was not the right choice for God to intervene and I believe He did. I will keep you all updated on how things go. I start my new job the second week of September and I am pretty excited!!!! Please keep me in your prayers, as this journey of faith is on going........
Romans 5:1-5
1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we[a]have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we[b] rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we[c] also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
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