The thing about being down and out is it’s normal. It’s something that each human being has to experience. We may not share these details on social media, so when it happens people feel like it’s just them. But it’s not just you. Life happens to us all. It’s not the end. You may feel like you are just here. Just out there. The truth is you are not.
Scripture tells us to count our blessings when our faith is tried (James 1:2-3.) When we’re in it, counting our blessings can feel impossible to do, but it helps because this is where God begins to answer those questions of our hearts in real time. This is when God shows us he’s still with us and he is supporting us while sending others to do the same until we ride our storms out to our rainbows. Below are five blessings that we can hope to experience when we are down and out.
When Down & Out You find out who is really on your side
When we are experiencing depression and thoughts of giving up, this isn’t the time to try to impress others with an image of perfection. You are human and it’s okay. This is the time to be vulnerable letting those who are trustworthy in. This is a time to lean into those who may be stronger than you as you go through your process of trusting in God to take you through safely and to bring you out better. Those who have been through their own experiences and made it out will stand firm with you.
Don’t hide how you are feeling from those who genuinely care. Join the life group, meet the girls for dinner/lunch, or hit the gym even if you don’t feel like it. Get involved in community. You’ll find out that you aren’t the only one going through something difficult.
Seeing others stand through their hardships will help you to stand. Others may even check on you which reminds you that you aren’t alone in this. You have help. God has given you this help through the safety of a healthy community. Your community has its own way of helping you to forget about the struggle for a while providing strength when you are fighting through your challenges on your own.
Your community also reminds you that you are worthy to live the best life when it feels like you aren’t. You get to see who genuinely cares for you when down and out and that should make you feel good.
You learn to depend on God.
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 2 Corinthians 1:8-9
Apostle Paul, in scripture, describes going through a type of trouble that felt like death itself. It had gotten to the point where living became what felt like a disparaging and hopeless thing. However, Paul did not stop there in his description. He realized that the pain he’d been through was allowed to cause him to not depend on himself, or the good times of life, but on Christ.
Now and then, life will send us one troubling experience after another. It feels like heavy pressure. Sometimes, in these moments, we don’t know how to move forward. However, these times have a purpose to cause us to rely on God. We can very easily depend on other things during this journey of life without even realizing it.
It’s often when we are reduced to nothing but God that we realize he is genuinely all we need above all of the other things we cling to. Because God can be silent during these periods, we may find it difficult to believe God is with us, but he is. Faith is not a feeling, but proof of what we cannot, feel, touch, or see just yet. If we hold on long enough standing firm on God’s word, we will be able to see God working in the middle of our circumstances.
I remember, during my most recent season of being down and out, I could not go to sleep for hours. I was so anxious about my future and things remaining the same as they had been. I did not know if I could survive without a change. I thought of the scripture be anxious for nothing but in all things with prayer and supplication let your request be made known unto the Lord.
I said, “Lord you said not to be anxious, but to pray. Can you help me with this?” I immediately began to hear a song playing in my spirit. It was “Do It Again” by Elevation worship. I pulled up the song on YouTube and listened to it. I cried as it felt as if God was speaking directly to me through the lyrics of the song. I immediately went to sleep after the song went off. That is a permanent reminder in my history now that God is with me. He sees and he acts. He is dependable.
You realize how resilient you can be
After a while, you’ll begin to get stronger. The things you did not have the energy to do before you’ll have the energy to do as you continue to move forward in faith. You’ll begin to reestablish hope for the future as your strength increases not only realizing by faith that this isn’t the end but experiencing it with your senses. You will have taken the blow and overcome it. We are overcomers in Christ. This is what differentiates us from the world. In Christ, we always have hope because God causes us to triumph in all things (2 Corinthians 2:14.) To triumph in all things, we have to go through some things to triumph over and through.
An ability to correct as you heal.
This is an opportunity for you to press pause on over commitments and things that may be distracting you from hearing Christ. As you re-shift your focus on seeking the Lord, you will notice his healing from the pain and hurt of the season. God often does surgery on our hearts during hardship and it hurts. However, needful corrections are made within us and the healing process begins. We are then better prepared for everything God intends to use the harmful season to bring about in our lives.
God doesn’t waste anything. He doesn’t cause the harmful season, but he promises to use it for our good as he uses all things to work for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Many harmful seasons are just the natural patterns of life that will happen to us all. God uses these things to make us strong. If we have begun to see things incorrectly in any area, God will correct us.
You eventually find clarity and greater direction
Now, here’s the really good part. Your vision gets clearer. It’s not so hard to get through each day. It’s clear and easy to see the work that’s been done inside. The healing has taken place, our passions begin to return with the strength to pursue them. Hopefully, in this clarity, we experience God’s direction that leads us to a new place in him. We can go on to strengthen others as the scripture says we are to do when we overcome. No matter what part of this process you are in when experiencing the hardness of life—know that you will eventually get to this part where things are much better and you make it out of the fog of depression and the hardness of life.
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