When God Has Smitten Me

Amos 4:9

I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.

A sad statement is made in the verse above when it says, I have smitten you. We are not talking about man smiting us, but we are talking about an omnipotent God smiting us. Any day that God must smite us is a day that we should stop and look at our lives to find out why He has smitten us. In my own personal life, whenever something goes wrong, I stop and ask myself four questions about why I am going through these challenging times.

First, I ask if I am wrong. I immediately assume that I have sinned when God is chastening me. Let's face it, likely God is trying to purify us when we are going through tough times. There is always a sin in our lives that we need to remove so that God can do something greater through us. When God sent the gold through the fire, He sent it through so the dross would be removed from the gold. That dross is either something that is hindering me from serving God, or it is a sin that I have in my life that will harm my ability to serve God. Whenever you are going through tough times in your life, you must immediately look at your own life and ask God what sin is in your life that He wants you to remove.

Second, I ask God to be with my spirit. I don't want the hard times to harm my spirit, so I immediately ask God to give me grace for my spirit. Only God's grace can help me go through the difficult times of life with a joyful spirit. I don't want to become a bitter person because God is chastening me when His chastening is to make me a better person. Therefore, I need God's grace for my spirit to help my spirit to be right in those days that God is chastening and purifying me to make me into a better person for His use.

Third, I ask God to teach me what He is trying to teach me. I often wonder what lesson God is teaching me through the hard times. Hard times put pressure on your life that reveal the cracks in your character or life that harm your ability to be for God what He needs you to be. You will find some of the greatest lessons learned will be through those tough times when God has smitten you with difficulties.

Fourth, I ask God to show me how I can take this difficulty to help others. The last thing I do is, I want to make sure that I can take the difficult time and use it to help others. Always understand God never sends us through difficult times just to hurt us, but He is sending them our way to help us become a better person so that we can use our difficulties to help others. When you read in the book of Ezekiel, God sent Ezekiel through difficult times to help others. God sent Job through difficult times so that it could be a help to us today. Every difficulty that you face is a tool you can use to help someone else who is going through the same difficulty that you face today.

My friend, the difficulties you face today are something God has sent your way to teach you and to purify you so you can use them to help others. Whether you are a pastor struggling in your church, a Christian hitting a wall in their ministry, or a believer trying to make it in their Christian walk, turn the difficulties of life into a tool to help others. God uses hard times to make you into a better tool for His use in the harvest of souls and the ministry.