…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
‭‭Romans‬ ‭5‬:‭3‬-‭5‬ ‭ESV‬‬

If I were to look at my life through my own eyes, I would get lost in a storm of confusion and chaos. I have experienced demonic attacks, depression, severe allergy problems that debilitated my day to day life…I don’t completely understand why, but life is often like that and it is so easy to look at the setbacks of our lives and wonder, does any of this make any sense? Maybe you have wondered the same thing. Maybe nothing in your life is making sense right now and you are afraid that nothing ever will. The problem with our eyes or the way we look at our lives is that we have a very limited perspective. That’s why we need the Word of God because it is only there that we are able to find the truth and to start making sense of the messes around us. Choosing to believe what the Bible says over our feelings and circumstances is like allowing God to change the lenses that we see life through.

When I let God show me what my life looks like from His perspective, I can see the character He has been forming inside me all along. The limitations, the suffering…all produce in us the very traits of character that we need to become the women we are called to be. Think of the pain of your life as a mold that you needed to fit into in order for God to give you the shape necessary to fulfill your destiny. So, God allows these things in our lives because He knows that they have the potential to be like a training ground for us when we allow Him to shape us in the midst of the fire.

There was a time when the pain I experienced used to threaten to destroy my existence. All I could think about was the pain and that caused me to look at my many inabilities, which caused me to carry a constant feeling of defeat everywhere I went. God wants to brings us to a place where the pain of our past no longer has the power to cast a shadow over our destinies. He wants to use it as the very thing that prepares us to step into our destinies! You might wonder how that is possible and I must say, it is pretty impossible without the power of God, but WITH GOD ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE!

Learning to look at your pain through the lens of God starts by accepting it. This doesn’t mean that you need to allow satan to destroy you. We are called to resist the devil and to live a life of victory but what I am referring to here is those things that are hard for you to accept. Maybe it’s the healing you’ve been waiting for or the unresolved issue in your life. The things you cannot change. The things that are often the complete opposite of how you wanted your life to turn out. Accept that God allowed it in your life for a purpose. Choose to be thankful for the strength He gives you in the midst of the weakness and remember that pain is never forever with God! Everything has a season.

Have faith that God is greater than your problems and that you are not defined by them. Christ is the one that defines you because He is the one who lives in you. Understanding this will empower you to look away from yourself. The best thing I ever learned is that my life is not about me. It’s about God and the beautiful plans He has for us. Plans that will never be limited by our problems. God has a way of using even the hardest things in our lives to accomplish His purposes. He is a good God and in order to be able to see the truth, you need to make a decision today that you are going to trust God because He is perfect in His ways. He is greater than ourselves and He is worthy of us allowing Him to mold us even when we do not understand.

You can rest in the truth that you are loved and you can trust God’s plan for you completely- no matter what things might look like in the natural. God is always working something so powerful behind the scenes and He is using the pain in your life to mold you more and more into the woman you are called to be- an Esther of our generation!

With love, Estera