God designed us to function best when we live a balanced life—mentally, physically, socially, and spiritually. Distress can make us wobbly.
Staying intact amid ongoing affliction requires us to maintain our balance to the extent we can under the circumstances.
Below is a checklist to help you assess your current equilibrium and identify areas of your life that may need adjustment.
Many items are Bible-based, while others are common sense. Not all are relevant or practical in every situation.
Focus On God
- Check your alignment. Be sure your perception of God aligns with his self-revelation in nature and in the Bible.
- Broaden your expectations to include a range of outcomes. We always want God to ease our journey, but sometimes he equips us with better boots instead.
- Clear the deck. If you are morally at odds with God, confess your sinfulness to him. Be specific. Turn away from these improprieties and walk in harmony with him as consistently as you can.
- Surrender yourself. Give God ownership of everything you have, do, and are. Follow him on his terms. Permit him to change you and the direction of your life as he sees fit.
- Pursue true contentment. Ask God to manifest in you the components of his contentment you need most, i.e., love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control.
- Study the Bible. Make it your primary source of spiritual encouragement and edification. Memorize the verses that are meaningful to you. Meditating on God’s truth crowds out the lies in our heart.
- Pray without whining. Commend God for his attributes. Thank him for the goodness he has already provided. Voice your concerns. Ask God what he wants to accomplish through your affliction and what you should do next to ensure that result. Detail your preferred outcome. Subordinate your preferences to his will. Ask God to glorify himself in and through you as you walk in harmony with him.
- Express faith in God. Tell God you trust him to help you endure your affliction, to produce goodness from it, and to resolve it as he deems best for you and those within your sphere of influence. Tell him you are willing to accept his appraisal of what constitutes best.
- Rely on the Holy Spirit. We cannot walk in harmony with God by our own efforts because of our inherently sinful nature. Ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen your stamina, intensify your noble desires, reinforce your self-discipline, and empower you directly as needed.
- Intercede for others. God knows your needs and wants before you tell him, so you do not need to spend much prayer time on them. Instead, ask God to bless the people you know. Pray that they recognize him as the source of their blessings, draw near to him as a result, and use their resources for his intended purpose.
- Pay attention to God’s silence. He may be unresponsive to your prayers because he is waiting for the opportune time to act. Alternatively, he may be waiting for you to align your will with his. Sometimes God is silent because we do not need new wisdom. Either he has already disclosed his insights in the Bible, we already know what to do from previous experience, we know others who know what to do, or the answers we seek are a matter of common sense.
- Ask “what” as well as “why.” God welcomes your inquiry into why he has allowed you to suffer, but also ask him what he wants you to learn from your affliction. This question represents a step forward.
- Give God your wants, needs, and fears. He has a standing offer to hold your burdens for you, and he is happy to do it. There is no need for you to strain under their weight.
- Let God manage the uncontrollable. You cannot do anything about these things anyway, whereas God is sovereign and omnipotent.
- Do your duty. Suffer well to the extent you can. Be a good example to those around you. Ask God to help you fulfill the role he has assigned you in this season of life so you do not hinder his effort to produce goodness through your affliction.
Address The Problem
- Accurately assess the nature and extent of your adversity. Never let your imagination magnify your distress.
- Mourn as needed. God will grieve with you.
- Own up to your responsibilities. If a poor decision on your part contributed to your suffering, acknowledge what you could have done differently.
- Forgive those who may share responsibility for your situation. Holding onto your anger and resentment will slow your recovery.
- Define an effective outcome. Devise a realistic plan to achieve it.
- Garner your resources. Access all available information and training. Enlist outside expertise as needed.
- Implement your plan. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do the best you can under the circumstances. And allow God to revise your plan as he sees fit.
Take Care Of Yourself
- Stay fit. Exercise. Eat right. Take time to relax. Get plenty of sleep.
- Socialize. Spend quality time with family and friends. Go to church. Attend public events.
- Stay mentally active. For example, pursue hobbies, read books, join a choir, or play sports. Choose activities that are positive and energizing.
- Identify daily respites. Examples include a daily crossword puzzle, a morning walk, a quiet cup of coffee, or a favorite television show.
- Find a support group. Identify sympathetic confidants who have experienced your affliction and can share their wisdom. If necessary, your church can connect you with these individuals.
- Handwrite letters to God. In a stream of consciousness, detail everything you think and feel about him and your situation, both good and bad. Hold nothing back; he can handle your honesty. Throw away your letters immediately after finishing them. Do not read them or share them with others.
- Keep a journal. Record the blessings God bestows on you and those in your orbit, such as Bible insights, answered prayers, secular learning, material provisions, and encouragement from others. Save your journal for future review.
- Kindly attend to those around you. Ministering to others, especially those outside your immediate sphere of influence, will help keep your problems in perspective, require you to lean on God for stamina, which has ancillary benefits, and give you opportunities to share what you are learning.
- Avoid things that compound your problems. Curtail activities that make matters worse. Minimize and counterbalance negative influences as much as possible. Follow the right shepherd.
Maintain Perspective
- Move forward. Use your time and energy to find a solution or at least improve your situation. Wallowing in misery suppresses hope, delays resolution, and prolongs the agony. Defeatism is self-fulfilling.
- Forgive yourself. If personal mistakes contributed to your suffering, forgive yourself. Unrelenting guilt is harmful to you and unhelpful to those close to you. If you struggle with this, ask God to renew your understanding of his forgiveness. Then adopt his perspective.
- Take life one day at a time. Or one minute at a time, if necessary. Do what you can today and what you must for tomorrow, but let future anxieties wait.
- Find hope where you can. Although God is our ultimate source of hope, identify temporal reasons for optimism.
- Look forward. Focus on the benefits of an effective outcome or on the enjoyable experiences that will remain available after a bad one. Anticipate the goodness God intends to produce through your affliction.
- Do not panic. Think through your alternatives at each juncture. Avoid making rash decisions on bad days. Instead, execute strategies crafted on good days.
- Never give up. Continue pursuing a positive outcome as long as it remains possible, no matter how remote it may seem.
- Be patient. Give God time to work. He may be pursuing several goals that extend beyond your current situation and include more than just you. Consequently, his timetable may differ from yours.
- Be thankful. God says we are always in the presence of something to be grateful for. Identify the good things around you—no matter how trivial they may be—and thank God for them. In dire circumstances, the only things worthy of thanks may be his presence, his forgiveness, and the promise of heaven, yet these are supremely good.
- Take the long view. Life on earth is just the first dot in an infinite line. After this, it is all bliss—for reborn believers, anyway. So live for the line, not the dot.
