How Not to Be Overcome by Trials in Life

“. . . Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.  For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins” 2 Peter 1:5-9.

Peter tells us in this text that if we lack faith, goodness, knowledge, etc, we are near-sighted and blind spiritually. But what does it mean to be near-sighted, exactly?

To read a little more of this passage for context, click here.

How to Make a Molehill into a Mountain

When you’re near-sighted, you can only see what’s right in front of you. Spiritually, this means when you encounter a trial, even something that won’t matter in a week or month, you focus on it.

To the exclusion of the big picture. And without regard to God’s promises for the future.

This is a problem because if we neglect the big picture, we are apt to make a molehill into a mountain. And respond to it like it is a mountain.

We are more likely then, to overreact and become depressed, full of self-pity and angry. And we might even retaliate.

This reaction will create more and bigger problems. And if we react disproportionately to these as well, our troubles will become even bigger. And more unmanageable.

The Big Picture- Far Sighted

All this to say, when we have a problem, we need to learn to see the big picture, and not just concentrate on the mess that’s right in front of us.

That molehill may be painful or difficult, but it doesn’t adversely affect our overall quality of our life. And in the long run, it won’t even matter.

We instead need to practice being far-sighted in our trials. We do that by standing on God’s promises. By doing this, we can have hope for the future, even if our present reality is difficult.

Several years ago, I was in an online degree program. One of the classes required weekly online discussions.

By the time we had had two discussions, I had not even gotten one reply to either of my posts. Each student was required to reply to two or three other students’ posts.

From my perspective at the time, everyone else seemed to have at least two replies, and I didn’t have any. This was embarrassing and hurtful to me. Not only that, but it begged the question “why”.

How Not to be Overcome by Trials in Life

I had to choose how I was going to respond to this situation. If I focused on it, and forgot about the big picture, I could’ve really gotten overwhelmed.

But the truth is, it didn’t affect the overall quality of my life at all. My kids were healthy (and this hadn’t always been the case. See Fighting the Giants in Canaan, Then and Now).

I was healthy. We weren’t in any great financial need, like so much of the country at the time. And most importantly, I had my faith.

So, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t even really matter. And I probably forgot about it in a weeks’ time anyway.

I knew God’s word was true, despite this miniscule bump in the road.

But if I would’ve been near-sighted and only saw the situation at hand and neglected to see the larger picture of my life, things could’ve been much different.

The Rabbit Hole Effect

I could have easily given in to self-pity, situational depression, anger, irritability or retaliation.

Let’s say, for example, I became irritable toward Noah, my adult son who was staying with me at the time. Especially because this human is temperamental, the situation could’ve quickly escalated into something ugly.

I would’ve then been stressed out and not able to study for the midterms that were coming up in a few days. Further, Noah, whose company I enjoyed, would’ve either left, or ensured I enjoyed him less, if you know what I mean.

And this would adversely affect our relationship in the long run. And since I was divorced and too busy to prioritize friendships, this relationship was very important to me.

On top of this, all this upset would not be good for our health. The correlation between stress and disease is well established.

You can begin to see how my rather insignificant problem could have quickly grown into larger ones if I was near-sighted, focusing only on the issue at hand.

Or let’s say instead of becoming irritable, I got depressed. Now, I wouldn’t feel like studying for my exam that day, or for the next few days either.

I would probably not do well on the exam. This would have a significant impact on my grade and my mood. I would soon feel overwhelmed by the whole program. And start to wonder if I should even continue in it.

Not only that, but the next classroom discussion would be even worse, making it even less likely that I would get replies.

How Not to Be Overcome by Trials in Life

The point is, if we respond to our trials keeping the big picture in mind, we will be much less likely to overreact. We have been made right with God through Christ! We also have good things in our present reality and promises for the future.

We will be less inclined to sin in our discouragement, creating more problems and a worse quality of life.

In all likelihood, if we respond in faith and hope, not losing sight of the positive aspects of our life, our molehill will not be detrimental to our life.

But if we overreact because of near-sightedness, we will probably make things worse with our sin. And we will cause what was initially an insignificant problem to become the mountain we imagined it to be.

If We Believe your Molehill is a Mountain, That’s What it Will Become

It will be done to us according to our faith. If we believe our molehill is a mountain, and react to it as such, it will in fact, become a mountain.

But, if we believe it’s the molehill it is, we will reduce the likelihood that it will grow. And it will probably shrink and die.

Why is it that those who lack the fruit of the Spirit, as revealed by the lack of qualities listed in our text, are near-sighted?

Because we attain the fruit of the Spirit by obedience.

And in order to obey, we must have faith. We need to believe if we resist trying to meet our own needs with sin, that God will meet our needs and take care of us.

Doing what’s right is often a threat to our well-being. God designed it to work that way. Therefore, to do it, we must believe that God is going to intervene for us.

And work what should’ve been to our detriment for our good (Romans 8:28).

In other words, doing what’s right or obedience requires that we look beyond the situation at hand to God’s promises.

And beyond the present difficult moment to the bigger picture.

Being near-sighted means we’re not exercising faith. Instead, we’re walking by sight. We’re putting our faith in the message of our present difficult circumstance. And not in God’s promise to us.

For another recent post, see What Does the Bible Say About Gratitude in the Wilderness.

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