Don't Give Up On God In Life's Difficulties

Esther 14:1, 3-5, 12-14 & Mt. 7:7-12.

Is your Christian faith a means of escape from the hard realities of life? Our critics often argue that people who cannot face unpleasant facts run away and hide in a make-believe world of pleasant fantasies. I suppose you can say that for some individuals this might be true.

But this is not how Jesus visualised Christianity. If we look at the lives of the saints we will find men and women who faced life with all its difficulties. They took to heart Jesus' words, "Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you."

Look at the apostle Paul. Few men can have encountered more adversity or experienced more hardship than he. But as he came to the end of his life he looked back on it with these words, “l have fought the good fight; l have finished the course: I have kept the faith." Those are not the words of a man who had used his religion as an escape from the hard realities of life!

Queen Esther and her people found themselves alone and surrounded by enemies. What were they to do? She prayed to God asking Him to give her courage to face them. God heard her prayers and saved her.

We know that life is not always easy. Sometimes we lurch from crisis to crisis. May the example of Queen Esther and the teaching of Jesus encourage us. We must keep on asking, searching and knocking, because we know that we have a Father Who cares about us. He doesn't always free us from harsh realities, as He did with Queen Esther, but He is with us helping us to cope with them.

Lord Jesus, experience teaches us that life is hard but help us to believe that we can turn to You, for Your support, to cope with the difficulties that we have to face.