While surfing the internet, I stumbled upon a Positive Outlook test. I consider myself a fairly positive person, with some room for improvement, but I was curious to see if I was right. Since the test would only take a few minutes, I filled in the answers.
When the results appeared, I wasn’t too surprised. There was a sentence noting my tendency to worry too much, and another on my bad habit of giving too much time and thought to the worst possible outcomes. But the conclusion was encouraging: “Overall, you rarely view the world as a place of bad experiences and events. You tend to invest trust and faith in the belief that things will turn out well in the end.”
Reading that last sentence, I smiled. In spite of hardship and suffering, I do believe that things will turn out well in the end. How, I don’t know, but I know that they will. That is because of my faith that God cares, and that He keeps His word. When He promises to keep me until the end, I know He will.
I didn’t always believe in Him, neither did I always believe things would turn out well in the end. Those were days filled with stress, tears, and anxiety, when I felt crushed by the weight of the whole world on my shoulders. I could already tell that the insecurities about my life, my health, my finances, my family, and my future were too big to carry alone, but I didn’t yet have the solution until I found God and my faith grew through reading His Word.
An acquaintance of mine has bad health. Not just small problems with a cold or the flu, but major issues that have kept him under fairly intensive medical oversight for the last 10 years.
Unfortunately, faith is the last thing on his mind. “I don’t need God,” he told me. “I can carry it myself!”
But he can’t. He wasn’t meant to, but because he thinks he needs to, his life is much more of a struggle than it would need to be.
I am not a better person than he is. I am not smarter, more patient, or more perseverant. But there’s one thing I do have which he doesn’t.
I have faith that God cares.
And that’s the key.