How do you respond to difficult situations?

We all know life can get you down, and we all know that life presents many, many difficult situations.

The key to overcoming difficult situations is how we respond.

You can go two ways with your response. One way is to get angry, frustrated, and despondent over your situation. This generally makes the situation worse instead of making it better. It’s something like taking a dead end street. You simply can’t get to where you want to go.

The second way involves assessing where you are at the moment and then finding the best plan to get where you want to be. Obviously, this is the better way. It gets you out of a dead end, and it helps put you back on the right road.

What can you do to get on the right track?

When Jeremiah wrote his famous letter to the exiles (Jeremiah 29), he encouraged the people living in exile in Babylon to do three things.

First, Jeremiah encouraged practical steps to make life better. God told the people to build houses and plant gardens. He told them to start families and make the most of their present situation.

In any difficult situation, there are plenty of small steps you can take to help get you on the right road. Many of these are practical solutions that help solve complex problems.

Second, do something to bless other people. God told the people of Israel to pray for the welfare of the city where they had been sent (these were their enemies).

Something wonderful happens when we start caring about other people.

Why not choose to pray for the people around you? You could pray for neighbors, fellow workers, and fellow students. What a difference we could make when we all pray for the people around us.

Third, look to God for your ultimate help. God is an “all the time God.” He is with us in times of rejoicing and in times of sorrow. He wants us to know Him, and He wants to be closely involved in the lives of His children.

He desires for us to seek Him with all our heart. When we do so, He will be found by us.

We were created to have a relationship with God. Without that living relationship with Him, we can never be what God created us to be.

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