(2021) How To Survive Bad Times

How to Survive Bad Times

In Psalms 103:13 we read “Teach us to number our days — that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

Meditation of this Word will bring a profound emotional experience. Many years ago, I would love to be able to count my days from one to another. It is definitely a spiritual discipline that will determine how spiritually advanced one becomes. No one has any guarantees.

The believer who sleeps in ignorance shall lose spiritual ground. The believer who counts the yesterdays as one to count them is really cheating himself if he doesn’t continue in this discipline. If you are one of those that think this verse has no meaning, I am sorry to say that you are probably one of the few people in the world that does not meditate on this Word.

Most people, if you ask them, would say that, yes, days should be kept, but the days that really count are the days that we spend meditating on the Word of God day by day. If you have ever heard of fasting, what is it?

Well, it is not just about denying food, it is about denying the want of things that you do not need in your life. It could be as simple as denying the television, but your choice is what matters. Whatever you deny the things that are bothering you, will be the things that you end up having.

For me and my family, we do not watch television on most days, except for the World Wide Web, and I use the World Wide Web as an example because it is quite easy to do. My wife is a web developer and we had our current site online since 1997, but we develop our own site with an online newsletter, and it’s also free.

So, denying things that you do not need in your life in exchange for having the things that you do need, is not something that everyone can or would do. Essentials like cell phones and computers and all the other tools of the modern age, we do not deny, but we also do not require them. My wife even allowed me to include that line on our site, but we do not receive marketing materials from them and I don’t expect I will ever see one of those free cell phones any time.

Everything that we receive for our ministry is either paid for by a gift or gift shop, or we have a sale that we run in our church. Another example of not allowing that to stop us from taking a step back and thinking about things that do not matter, but are important to us, is running an ad in the Sunday feature in your local newspaper.

Prayer flexing and meditation can be done at any time, and I think is something that we can all do from time to time. It does not have to be done publicly with your friends, because that kind of stuff is repetitious anyways.

Prayer flexing allows you to take your hands off of the steering wheel and be able to think about whatever is on your heart. And although I am a businessman and I do have to take care of these things, I just know that it would be a lot easier if I practiced going into God’s presence on a regular basis.

I do not want to be on my death bed saying, “I did it all wrong”; looking back at what I should or should not have done with my life, but I at least realized that I had the opportunity to take a step back, and had the time to be irrational about some things and just be irrational for some others. Taking the step back gives us the ability to apologize sincerely to those people that we hurt, while also forgiving ourselves.

That allows us to move on from those situations, and allow other situations of significance in our lives to progress – not because we are so hard on those we forgive, but because we realize that we are better and stronger than we used to be and that we have experiences and issues that are a lot more common than what our personal movies would show us.

Things that are going on in your life that you do not want? Hold those thoughts, and forgive yourself. Give yourself an opportunity to look at that and change your attitude about it to what you truly feel instead of what your movies would show you. It is okay to change your mind.

You are a good and worthwhile person, and you should not allow this to keep happening to you, but you can change it. Instead of getting morose about your situation because you are stuck in the ways of the past, try to see it as an opportunity for change for the good.

That is what the Lord wants for you anyway -He can handle it if you can just believe and trust Him. You are not morose, but strong and amazing. You can survive bad situations that you cannot make sense of, and do fine when they turn out to be bad for you. You can still learn from them and rise above them.