STAY IN THE RACE!

Your ongoing trial may involve physical suffering, unemployment, children who rebel, faithless friends, mental distress, turmoil or pain. As you endure day after day, Satan will whisper to you as he did to Job: "The righteous don't suffer. If God heard you — if he saved you and his promises are true — you should have been rescued immediately. Where is your God? Is this what faith gets you?"

Beloved, do not cast your faith aside! Satan is a liar. You are enduring hardship because God loves you, because he cares. Think about it: You asked the Lord to make you more like him. Only he knows what that will require. He knows your suffering, and he won't let you be destroyed by it. In fact, he knows just when to make a way of escape for you. He won't act until that appointed time, and "will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Be assured, God has everything under control. The pain, the lingering sickness, the prayers that seem to go unanswered — he knows all about them. And he knows why he hasn't lifted your trial before now. As happened with Paul, he is using the "thorn in your flesh” to work toward your blessing. Indeed, the very thing you want so much — the answer you believe is so necessary — might be something God knows is not best for you. If he ultimately says, "No," you know he is preserving your soul and answering you in a much better way.

Through it all, the great cloud of witnesses urges you, "Continue fighting the battle with faith. Stay in the race!"

Consider this powerful word from the author of Hebrews: "Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry (Hebrews 10:35-37).