THE BREAKING POINT
Kathy Bernard - Publisher
“Breaking
point…The point at which a person, object, or structure collapses under stress:
WHAT is your breaking point when despair becomes your constant companion? When fear has paralyzed and reduced you to a state of anxiety and grief? Maybe you have lost your job, in a tangle of money problems, a hopeless state of health, or perhaps even been maligned by someone you thought you could trust. Night holds no peace because the sleep you hoped would banish the nightmares of daylight refuses to come. You feel hopeless and alone and life ceases to offer its meager consolations.
WHEN there is no relief in sight, the complexity of life weighs heavily
because each time a little light breaks through, a cloud of new despair washes over it. A vital piece of our human puzzle is missing and
during times like this we feel any move we make will bring us closer to the edge of no
return. Because we are Christians we think we should
not expect such sorrow in our lives. We pray
and feel that God will take care of it for we do not want to fight these insurmountable
battles. We want an instant fix.
CONSIDER that
until we have stood on the steps of despair, until we have looked in the face of failure,
until we find ourselves in the deep pool of misery we cannot know the almighty power of
our heavenly Father. Only when our faith has
been tested in adverse waters of defeat can we know the greatness of God’s love. Troubles, problems, and afflictions will
always be there. But it is what you and I
learn from these trials that gives us our strength. If we are on our Christian walk we have to trust, we have to believe
that God is at the end of it. For some, it is
a long, hard fall from where we were in happier times but unless we wallow in the cesspool
of calamity and misfortune we will never know how great and mighty is the loving God Who
pulls us out to safety. You and I can never
experience God’s deliverance if we have been living in a make believe world where
reality and trust stands in the shadows of doubt and uncertainty. It
is easy to be a Christian when all is good and everything is running smoothly.
THE scriptures declare that those who live Godly shall suffer persecution. When times get
tough, our nation gearing up for war around the world, our jobs shaky, our bank account
dwindling, and the very foundation of our lives trembling with unrest, we begin to feel
every move we make puts us even further back in the line of peace and tranquility. We become fearful, afraid that we will not be able
to make it through. It is painless to be a Christian when life
is rosy with promise but sometimes our faith starts to lag when things get heated and
scary. It becomes hard to depend on a
God Whom we have never seen and never spoken to in person.
In times of trouble, it is then that we begin to question our faith and our
allegiance to it. If God does not answer
right away, we begin to be a doubting Thomas and all the trust we thought we had will
sometimes start to crumble. We begin to
wonder if He is really there and if He is, why doesn’t He answer our prayers? In our impatience we
might think that prayer does not work for us, that God does not hear so we forget our
Christian walk and where we are supposed to be going and sometimes some of us even
“give” our ticket to glory away in order to “hang in” with the crowd
and enjoy the side shows along life’s way to ease our suffering.
If you are
at the breaking point in your life, remember that your God and my God is still on His
awesome throne. He didn’t promise us
life would be without misery. He has shown
this to us all throughout the Bible. The
history of mankind is filled with oppression, trouble, war and discontent. All manner of sadness as well as sin has preceded
us to this day. Persecution, sorrow, pain and cruelty cover the pages of the Old and New
Testament with blood and tears. Consider
Moses, consider Jacob, consider Peter, and consider Job and all the great apostles who
suffered for His name. If this life would be
easy, how could we know and recognize God’s great strength and almighty power when He
comes to our aid? If we have been on the
receiving end of good fortune without afflictions, we can’t see His goodness until we
have fallen down to the valley of despair. It
is there that we will find the God of might and majesty.
It is then that we can test those promises God has given when we ask Him for
His intervention.
OUR faith is a
tiny seed that grows best in the pit of despair and the fires of pain and suffering. It grows best when life is not rosy with promise. It grows best when I can recognize that I cannot
fix life myself but need to lean on the Father. It
grows best when nothing or no one else can help me. If
I can go through my Christian life facing the sorrows and tribulations life gives me then
I can experience first hand His great love and compassion.
If I have never been at the breaking point, if I have never found myself nailed to the cross of
unspeakable misery, mind boggling hard luck how can I know
God’s great love for me? God
did not promise overnight deliverance. If I
read the Bible I can see that it is filled with great believers stalwart in their faith,
depending on God for their deliverance. In
the Book of Daniel, the faith of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego prevails as a strong
lesson in trust even today. Because they
refused to worship a golden idol, they were cast into a furnace of fire by their king.
Imagine the shock King Nebushadnezzar felt when he saw them with not a hair on their head
or their clothing singed and there in the midst of the raging fire was a fourth man who
appeared to be like the Son of God. (Daniel 3:8-25)
So, if I can go through my
fires on this battlefield of trouble and disappointment, my belief in an almighty God will
grow strong, for it is in my darkest hour that He will come to me, pick up my burden and
renew me. It is only then that I can see His
greatness.
Psalms, the 27th Psalm verses 1-5. The Lord is my
light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom
shall I be afraid? When the wicked came against me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and
fell. Though an army should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should
rise against me, in this I will confident. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will
I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold
the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. For in the time of trouble He shall
hide me; He shall set me upon a rock.
WE must stay firm and steady in the midst of our
turmoil, hanging on to the hand of our Savior, never letting others lure us away. When unspoken, negative thoughts that limit us
creep into our subconscious, mentally toss them aside and pray even harder. Don’t give up and be at peace for the
promises of God never fail. When we reach
that heavenly plateau where God reigns He will make known all the answers we seek and we
will understand that His mighty hand was always there to steady us even in the midst of
chaos because His power is bigger than anything life gives to us.
DO not let fear overcome your Christianity. Do not let fear overshadow the word of God. What is faith if not to plough through the forest
knowing that God is leading and guiding us even as we cannot see the victory ahead?
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