Having Faith in the Midst of Hardship

One Friday, my team had some errands to run in Antigua. Before we left, we all discussed wanting to slow down our pace and use our time intentionally. We wanted to be praying as we walked down the streets as we did the things we needed to do. If we saw someone we felt called to talk to, we would talk with them. When we got off the bus in Antigua, our team split into two groups, each with different plans. We had plans, but we were also going to be obedient to what the Lord asked us to do as we walked.

My group was several minutes down the sidewalk when a man a few paces ahead of us tried to sit down but fell more than he sat. We decided to talk with him, so we went up to him, introduced ourselves, and asked him how he was doing. When we approached him, he cried and said he was doing really badly. I knelt on the sidewalk next to him to be able to look him in the eyes as we talked. He explained to me some of the struggles that he has faced in his life and is currently facing. He shared with us that his family doesn’t want him, he is extremely poor, and he has had excruciating pain in his legs for as long as he can remember.

As we talked with this man, I was amazed by his faith. He said that his family doesn’t want him, but God does. God wants to be near to him and have a relationship with him. He is extremely poor, but he believes in God’s provision. He had extreme pain in his legs and struggled to walk, but he had hope that God alone would be able to heal him. Despite every difficult circumstance he has faced in his life and every hard thing he is currently living, he has held fast to his faith. His life has been challenging, but he has not turned his back on God. Everything that he shared with us, he brought it back to God and his character. Even though he had so little, he was ministering to us. He could have lost all hope in his life, but he was crying as he was ministering to us about the God he loves and is loved by.

After talking with him for quite some time, we prayed over his legs. After praying over his legs twice, he told us that his legs felt better than they did before we prayed. Praise God! He didn’t want us to leave, so we decided to send two people from our group to buy him food and return while the other two sat with him and talked with him some more. We decided to do this and wanted to surprise him, but he started to walk away. His legs were healed, and he decided it was time to walk without pain. We didn’t get to buy him food and spend more time with him, but we gave him some company, talked with him about Jesus, and prayed over him. It was a true God moment, and I’m grateful for how he partnered with us.

As I was walking away from our time with this man, I reflected on how he ministered to us. The Lord reminded me of Jonah at that moment. At the end of Jonah, God is trying to prove a point and change Jonah’s heart. He appointed a plant to grow up and give him shade, which made him extremely glad because of the plant. It’s written that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (Jas 1:17, ESV). God had appointed the plant to grow as a temporary gift to Jonah. After appointing the plant to grow, God appointed a worm to attack it, causing it to wither. When the sun came, and the withered plant wasn’t there to give shade, Jonah was angry and wished to die. God had given him the plant for a short time, but Jonah was furious when it withered. Job, a man who endured much suffering and loss for the sake of the Lord, wrote, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21, ESV). Even though he had experienced significant loss, Job still blessed the Lord. He acknowledged that the Lord took things away from him, yet he still blessed his name. Jonah, however, was angry with God when he took the gift that he had given to him. Often, when we experience a loss, we are mad at God, even though he is the one who gave us the gift for a given time. While we have the gift, we should be glad that we have it and thank him for the gifts he has given us. When he takes things away from us, he may be offering us something better, trying to teach us something, or growing our faith and reliance on him. In Job’s case, God was testing and growing his faith. In Jonah’s case, God taught him about the town of Nineveh and compassion.

Something that I have found myself praying for a lot recently is restoration. Many people that we encounter, like this man, need physical restoration. They are in pain and don’t have the resources to get medical help, so the only source of hope that they have is for healing from Jesus. Jesus was able to heal in the Bible, and he gave his disciples the same authority to heal. God’s character and power are constant, so if he could heal people in the Bible, he can do the same now. He wants to partner with us to physically restore his beloved children. It’s important to know that it’s not us who bring the healing, but the power of God at work through us that is healing them. If you never pray for healing, you will never see healing. If you don’t pray boldly, you limit God’s power. He is the same God then as he is today. He desires for the bodies of his children to be restored. If they are not restored in the physical world, they will still receive a new body without pain in heaven. The man that we talked with needed physical restoration and restoration of relationships. He told us that his family doesn’t want anything to do with him, so as we prayed for restoration to his physical body, we also prayed for restored relationships in his family. We are one body, and God desires us to be united. I have heard many stories from people I know of how God restored their families. God can restore the most broken relationships if you diligently pray and allow him to enter the brokenness. I regularly encounter people who are hurting because of the brokenness in their families. I am grateful that I can pray for restoration over their situations and ask the Lord to be their comfort.

There’s nothing that he can’t do, but you will never know if you never pray for it. He can bring restoration to the most hopeless and broken situations. Pray bold prayers and hold on to hope.