Trusting God When You're Struggling: Overcoming Obstacles to Faith

By C.E. White

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." - Matthew 11:28

The world is full of things that undermine our faith. Too often, we push and scramble through life, allowing our feelings to control our decisions, attempting to accomplish things in our own strength, and trusting in worldly wisdom rather

• Language: English
• Publisher: CWM Publishing
• Release date: Oct 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781733248730

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Trusting God When You’re Struggling:

Overcoming Obstacles to Faith by C.E. White

Copyright © 2020 by Connie E. White

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated in the footnotes, are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Italics added in Scripture are the author’s emphasis.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-7332487-3-0

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www.cewhitebooks.com

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First Edition, November 2020

Cover design by Jessica Bagge

Interior design by Kevin G. Summers

To my beloved friend and critique partner Sharon—your insight sharpened this book in its dull places, and your encouragement kept me writing through my own.

CONTENTS

Section One - Overcoming The Obstacles

Finding His Promise

Expectations

Fear

Self-Sufficiency

Doubt

Pleasure

Abandonment

Insufficiency

Failure

Suffering, Persecution, And Other Generally Hard Things

Distraction

Laziness

Hurry

Prosperity

Worry

Dreams

Conformity

Regret

The Cares Of This World

Section Two - Building Spiritual Health

Preventative Measures

Belief

Hope

Prayer

Fasting

Satisfaction

Thankfulness

Delight

Things Unseen

SECTION ONE - Overcoming the Obstacles

FINDING HIS PROMISE

The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped—it requires an active participation in following Jesus as He leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory.

Eugene H. Peterson, The Jesus Way

When’s the last time you felt unencumbered by the things of this world? Most of us probably have a tough time answering that. There’s too much wrestling for our attention and shifting our eyes off God, but asking the question still gives me hope, because I know God’s promise for us.

Come to Me, and I will give you rest, He says.¹

Be anxious for nothing.²

I want to live in God’s rest and in light of what I truly believe—that this world is not my home. I want to fix my eyes on Jesus. I want to pray without ceasing.³ I want to walk away from the mirror of the Word and remember what I look like for more than a moment or two. In short, I want to be a doer, not just a hearer.⁴ I want to live in the freedom Christ offers.

So, what keeps me in chains, and how do I get out of them? I’m going to explore many of the things that keep us from trusting God when things are difficult. I want to do this not because I’ve mastered the art, but because I know the study will drive me deeper into His Word where the lessons and truths will establish themselves in my own heart.

Like the Israelites, God’s salvation took me out of slavery, and I was grateful. But He’s also led me into the desert, and it turns out I don’t always like the desert. It’s uncomfortable and boring and hard. I don’t understand it, and I never feel settled. I’m starting to wonder where we’re even going. I’m grumbling. I want comfort. I want pleasure and ease and accolades and security and control, and the desert gives little opportunity for such things. The only thing to rely on in the desert is God, and I’m too often not content to depend on His daily sustenance and bask in His presence.

Ouch. It hurts my heart to say those words, because deep down, I know God is worth it. I know what He has for me—what He has for all who are heavy laden—is good. It’s rest. It’s peace. It’s love and freedom, and He’s taking me to the Promised Land. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.

Receiving God’s rest is also about giving up myself. I can’t follow Him to the Promised Land (or anywhere else) if I’m still hanging on to my own agenda. And ultimately, hanging on to my agenda is a lack of trust. It means either I don’t believe He knows what He’s doing or that He’s capable of doing it or that He really wants what’s best for me.

Wasn’t that the crime of the Israelites? A simple lack of faith that He was taking them where He said He would? A weariness with the monotony and wandering with no time frame, no understanding of His plan, and a waning hope in what was promised?

When I was young, I used to judge the Israelites for their lack of faith. How could they doubt God when they’d seen all the miracles He did in Egypt and throughout their own history?

Time tempered my arrogance as my own grumblings appeared. The temptation to follow my own path—one that makes sense and feels good—looms constantly in my mind, pounding my faith like a battering ram.

The only way to walk in the desert with joy is to trust God, and the only way to trust Him is to know Him. But if we’re in the desert without all the things we think we want, what’s the point? Why keep doing it? And what is this rest He offers? Can we get past all the obstacles to experience it?

God says we can, and I believe Him. Let’s find out what it takes.

EXPECTATIONS

Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.

Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

Expectations are a double-edged sword. They can be the beautiful hope as you await the fulfillment of God’s promise, or they can be your biggest source of discontentment and disappointment. They are what you allow them to be. If you let go of the what might have beens and fix your eyes on the blessings God has in front of you instead, you will find that rest and peace He offers.

Our expectations often remain in the periphery until we start to think time is running out and they may never be realized. Then we pass some subconscious deadline, and they begin to fester into discontentment—

Maybe you don’t become disillusioned with your singleness until you hit thirty and all your friends are married.

Maybe you don’t get frustrated with your financial situation until you are still living paycheck-to-paycheck at forty.

Maybe you don’t get angry over your failing health until you’ve lost the weight, taken the supplements, finished the treatment.

And then it strikes. God hasn’t come through, and your circumstances are no longer fair. Where is God now? Isn’t this when He’s supposed to show up? What will your response be if He doesn’t?

Abraham and Sarah may be the best examples of how NOT to handle our expectations. God told Abram to uproot his entire life, and with that command came the promise that he would father a great nation.⁵

Abraham believed God and did as He asked. But as the years went on, the promise seemed more and more far-fetched. Seven years had passed when we see Abraham start to question: But Abram said, ‘O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’ And Abram said, ‘Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.’

But God reassured him: ‘This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.’ And He brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then He said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ And he believed the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness.⁶

We can relate, right? Abraham performed this drastic act of obedience, uprooting his entire life, family, and business. Can you imagine if your family suffered from infertility and God came to you saying, Move to Africa right now. Leave everything you know, and I will give you a child? What if seven years later you were still childless? I’d be questioning, too.

But with this reassurance, Abraham went on in faith. God took note. Abraham still believed; he just needed some encouragement. So far, so good.

Fast-forward four more years. No child. So they took matters into their own hands.

Maybe this is what God meant, they probably thought.

And we all know the story. Abraham fathered Ishmael with Sarah’s handmaid and sparked an enmity and unrest that lasts into our own time.

The promised son Isaac was born fourteen years later—twenty-five long years after God’s initial promise and well beyond the point of human possibility. The fulfillment was beautiful, but it was shadowed by the disbelief along the way.

What if they had waited for what God had in store?

How many times have you taken matters into your own hands? God didn’t hand you the job, the relationship, the money. So, you scrambled. You grasped in desperation, trying to find a way to get what you want—what He promised you.

And eventually, you made it happen. You got a job in that field, but the leadership was toxic, and the work fell flat. You got married, but your spouse had a violent temper you never saw before the wedding. You bought those things you deserved with a credit card and ended up in a nightmare of debt.

Your Ishmaels. You thought they would satisfy you, but they just caused more strife, more disillusionment, more heartache.

But what if you had waited?

What if the promise is twenty-five years in coming? Can you walk in the desert that long without succumbing to your human wiles to get what you want?

If you really believe there is an Isaac coming—if you really trust God—you can.

But more often than I’d like to admit, we stop believing sometime in those dry years. We misunderstood. God doesn’t care. He wants us to act.

God helps those who help themselves, we think.

But that’s just what we say when we stop believing He wants to help us at all.

I have learned that when I feel that desperation urging me to claw and push and do whatever it takes to attain something, it is never of the Lord. Because that desperation is fear, and fear is never from Him. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.⁷

If you feel that fearful grasping and are on the verge of taking matters into your own hands, take a step back. Look at Abraham and Sarah and see the beauty of the Lord’s fulfillment of their dreams vs. the strife of their own attempt.

I find solace in the fact that despite Abraham and Sarah’s doubts, they are still commended for their faith in Hebrews 11, the Faith Chapter. By faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith, he made his home in the Promised Land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.  For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered Him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.⁸

Though their faith faltered and their journey was imperfect, God still ultimately counted them among the faithful. So when you look back at your own Ishmael in shame, remember it is not the end of your story. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.⁹

His mercies are new every morning, so your chance to trust Him starts fresh every day. The fulfillment of God’s promise will always be glorious. And how much more beautiful is that fulfillment when all hope seems lost?

Takeaways:

God has His own timeline, but He will always keep His word. Hold fast to Him.

Expectation is not the enemy, but when you place your hope in circumstances and personal desires instead of on God Himself, you will lose your direction.

The fulfillment of God’s promise is not dependent on your perfect faith. Abraham and Sarah doubted along the way but always came back to their belief in God’s character. I believe; help my unbelief!¹⁰ is a perfectly acceptable response to God!

God’s promise is no less sweet when it comes later than you thought possible. Indeed, joy is often the most profound when the blessing is, by all accounts, impossible and anyone sensible would have given up.

FEAR

David didn’t kill Goliath because he set out to slay giants...he killed Goliath because his dad sent him to take his brothers sandwiches, and Goliath got in the way.

Rich Mullins

Fear is a liar. It’s a master of disguise, a viral contagion, an iceberg hidden beneath the surface just waiting to wreck you. Fear told me I didn’t have what it takes to write this chapter. I kept flitting away from the page and finding excuses not to begin. Snacks may have been involved.

I’ll just scroll the internet, I thought. No one knows I’m writing this anyway, and nobody will care. Who am I? Someone else can do it better.

Fear doesn’t want me to take a risk and put myself out there. Stepping out is dangerous; I might get hurt. Better just live a quiet life and keep to myself. Fear is a bully that will taunt, blame, accuse, and belittle just to keep you from taking a chance and failing…or succeeding. It would rather you stay on the sidelines than get into the game, and its tactics are relentless.

It would be easy to stop there—to say all you have to do is stand up to the bully, and he will go away. More often than not, that would be true. Ninety-five percent of the things you fear will never happen, and you can’t control the rest.

OK, I just made those numbers up, but you get the idea.

However, sometimes fear speaks the truth. There’s a real threat, a real enemy.

Sometimes, you really don’t have what it takes.

Sometimes, cancer is bigger than the doctors.

Sometimes, fear is a giant—a Goliath.

What then?

Every day for forty days, Goliath came out to insult and mock the Israelites. Every day, they cowered at the sight of this giant decked out in his finest armor.

Until David showed up. This giant inciting terror into the armies of the living God was an affront to everything David knew of the Lord, and he wanted to stand up to it.

His brothers said he was arrogant and negligent.

The king said he was untrained.

This is often the reaction when you step out in faith. Others don’t understand. They’re either jealous, ashamed, or fearful themselves. But David would not be turned aside.

So they tried to give him the tools that made sense—armor, a helmet, a sword—but David knew his weapon was the Lord. He already understood that some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God, as he would later write in the Psalms.¹¹

You know the story. Seemingly against all odds, David won. And he did so using the humble tools God had put in his life along the way. Trust that God is preparing you to face the battles He has before you. You don’t need a mighty weapon. You only need Him on your side.

But let’s go back a little further, because David’s battle against fear didn’t start with Goliath.

He tells Saul about killing a lion and a bear to defend his flock, and he gives God credit for those victories. I’m guessing he was pretty frightened when facing down the teeth and claws of those deadly predators. Maybe he wasn’t totally confident in his ability to defeat them, but he stood strong because it was the duty God had given him, and he wanted to do it well. I’m going to go further back and bet that David’s confidence in God was proven even before the lion or the bear. Maybe it started the first night he had to sleep under the open sky alone with the sheep.

The key is that during his moments of fear, David turned to the Lord. Even in his daily life, he knew God was the one defending him, and he stepped out beyond his own strength because he trusted. Trusting along the way gave him the strength to step out before Goliath.

Fear keeps many of us in bondage every day. You want to reach out to that person, but they might think you’re strange. You want to write that book (ahem), but what if it’s a flop? You want to apply for that job, but you know you’re underqualified.

But if you never walk out past your own abilities, how will you ever believe God has

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