When we hear things spoken about in the Bible, we rightfully perceive it is to enhance our relationship with Jesus as our Lord and Savior. A lot of what the Bible teaches is applicable in our daily personal and professional existences as well. These rules of faith as described in the Bible apply to every part of life.

I recently was thinking about verses from the 2nd letter of Paul to the church at Corinth. this letter was necessary as his first letter trying to inform and guide the people away from their sins of immorality and false teachings. I believe the verse written in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 give us a better understanding and direct insight into what followers of Jesus can expect when under persecution from life around them.

Remember that when dealing with the Bible, it is not just referring to Biblical things and applications but a vast and general understanding of the ways of life. The verse says, “You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. We've been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we're not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we've been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn't left our side; we've been thrown down, but we haven't broken. “ (The Message)

We are all surrounded by worldly troubles such as war, famine, and disease. We are battered by personal afflictions like sickness, addiction, depression, and oppression. Our life is filled with broken hearts and relationships, financial woes, longings and desires. We struggle and stumble seeming to lose more then we seen to gain. The verse says we are not sure what it is we are supposed to do but we are sure God has a plan. Because of this endless array of challenges our faith is railed and assailed, our beliefs are weak and challenged, the world appears to be out of control, but the faithful know and believe that God is in control. We see our defeats and losses as overwhelming but yet rise to meet them another day.

In the book of Galatians, Paul refers to this endless list of troubles as the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence. It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. Sadly, our lives seem to fit all too comfortably into one or two of these compartments.

But this essay is about resiliency and the ability to overcome things of the earth. It may appear at times as if God is too busy to deal with the meanderings of our life but to the contrary He is passionately interested in every detail of its minutia. In the book of Isaiah it states, “He won't brush aside the bruised and the hurt and he won't disregard the small and insignificant, but he'll steadily and firmly set things right. In another translation of the same verse it applies, “He will not crush those who are weak or quench the smallest hope. He will bring full justice to all who have been wronged.”

Again, it says, He will not crush the weak, or blot out the smallest light of hope. It is His promise to all those who seek Him. The offer still stands, today, as it did all the yesterdays of our life and as it will for the future, unchanged. It is an awesome offer indeed.