When we are new to our walks and faith we can almost live in this honey moon phase. There is something about giving your life to Jesus at camp or even raising up out of the baptism water that is incredibly freeing. You feel like you can conquer everything. In fact, the first few months you are faithfully journaling, you show up to church every week, and you even develop a habit of posting scripture in your bio on social media and sharing some of your favorite christian influencers or becoming one yourself. It seems like everything in your life will finally start to make sense or fall into place. You want the world to know and rightfully so. Because there is supposed to be this beautiful feeling about finally knowing and accepting God’s goodness and mercy. 

But what about when that super good and safe feeling starts to wear off. Where you maybe start falling out of your spiritual habits and grab hold of some of the former bad ones you felt you would never do again. When depression rears its ugly head and it brings its companions severe stress and anxiety. What about when you encounter your first big loss and death and the fear of it begins to harden your heart. And your stance shifts from God I trust you with everything to God I don’t know if I trust you anymore. If you are good then why is this not easy.

It is easy to believe that a life with God is supposed to be free of trouble, adversity, or deep pain. Although God does want the very best for us, the easy pain free life was never promised. In fact, scripture states “In this world you will have trouble” but he promised to be with us in it. How do we cling to that when everything in our world seems to be falling apart? How do we develop a faith that acknowledges grief but finds his goodness within it?