In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are going through in different ways. Some have gotten ill, but then recovered. Others have gotten ill but couldn’t survive the illness. There have been others who have lost jobs, family, friends, or their own sense of being.
Some people became closer in the shutdown while others drifted further apart. Others fell into such a depression that they couldn’t take it. Self-destruction. This destruction could be that they turned to drugs, alcohol, suicide, or something else that led to self-harm.
There is a great amount of us that are going through a different pandemic. Your pandemic, to you, is greater than corona.
How Do You Get Through Your Pandemic?
Your pandemic maybe an illness that you have been fighting for years. You go to doctors. No answers. You go to specialists. No answers. You go get this treatment or that. No answers.
Maybe your pandemic is a family member that you are taking care of. Their situation is such a weight on you that it has altered your behavior. Your way of thinking. The way you respond to other things.
How Do You Get Through Your Pandemic?
This pandemic, your pandemic, may or may not be God’s will, but He will use it for His will.
This pandemic, your pandemic, may not be for you. It may be for someone else, but you have to go through in order for His will to be fulfilled. You have to go through because God knows your resolve, your strength, will get you through what is meant for someone else.
Or the pandemic, your pandemic, is for you. Something that God needs you to go through in order to get you to where He wants you to be. You have to endure.
Either way, it’s a test.
How Do You Get Through Your Pandemic?
During the pandemic, we have to focus on what God wants us to focus on and not the negative. As bad as it may seem, with faith, God can and will end the or your pandemic.
During the pandemic, your pandemic, lives may have been lost. God didn’t promise that he wouldn’t destroy some of mankind. He promised that he wouldn’t destroy all of mankind. Genesis 8:21 tells us so. God promised Noah “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.” (NRSV)
The tornados that ripped through the Miami Valley area May 27, 2019, didn’t take one life. But it did clean up some areas that have been in hiding. Couldn’t see pass the trees. These tornados brought together some people who may have never crossed each other’s path.
God never promised not to take some of mankind. In Genesis 19:24, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins. Sacrifices were made. Lot had to move away from the area because of what God was about and did do.
God destroyed parts of Egypt when Pharaoh refused to let His people go. Exodus 9:6 reads all the livestock of the Egyptians died; Exodus 9:25 says the hail came down and destroyed human and animal; and Exodus 12:29 says God destroyed the first born of Egypt.
In the examples, God took his people through something so that His will was done. Some suffered. Some were sacrificed. But it was done because of Pharaoh.
It is later that we read some were destroyed for their own sins.
Let us look at a woman who was going through her pandemic for twelve years. Put yourself in her shoes if you can. Think of your pandemic and it lasting twelve years. If you have been in yours this long than you know how this woman felt. If you haven’t, maybe you need to ask somebody because I can’t. “She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had: and she was no better, but rather grew worse.” (Mark 5:26 NRSV)
What this means is she saw one hematologist after another for twelve years. Every year or two, the world of medicine improved, but nothing nor no one could help her.
How do you get through your pandemic?
Faith
Prayer
Work
Love
Prayer
Work
Endurance
Prayer
Work
Trust
Prayer
Work
Belief
Prayer
Work
Faith
I started and ended with FAITH because to get through your pandemic, you have to start and finish with faith.
I mentioned PRAYER and WORK so many times because to get through your pandemic, you have to pray and work. Prayer without work won’t get you through.
James 2:14-26 tells us “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.” (NRSV)
You want your pandemic to end so you pray that God will end it. But if you aren’t willing to put in the work that God requires, it won’t. The work he requires may just be that you walk in your faith, your belief, and to endure what you have to go through to get through.
The work could be that you have to look at your situation from a different view. From His view.
Let’s go back to the woman with the issue of blood. One day in that twelfth year, ‘She heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”(Mark 5:27 – 28 NRSV)
She had Faith and she prayed. She put in the work by going to doctors to get through her pandemic. She loved herself enough to not give up, so she continued to pray and put in the work. She endured her pandemic for 12 years, still praying. Then God showed up in the form of a man named Jesus. She had heard about all he had done. She believed and trusted that if she put in the work to push her way through the crowd and touch a small area of his clothing, she would be healed. She would be through her pandemic
In all things he requires us to have and show love. This too is work. Sometimes it is hard to love and show love when you are going through a pandemic, your pandemic. Especially if the pandemic is meant for someone else.
We have to put in the work, pray, walk in faith, love one another, trust, and believe that when He says it is time, the pandemic will end. Waiting for God to do things on his time requires endurance.
Remember everybody’s pandemic is different and how you. I’ll said that again. How YOU get through your pandemic is all that I’m talking about. We may be dealing with the same type of situation, but we will deal and get through it differently.
God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows what we need and what is needed to achieve His outcome. God will give us what we need to get through our pandemic. We have to be willing to hear and to do what is necessary in order to get through.
Beloved if you need to stand in the kitchen and bake all day. When the day ends, you are feeling better or maybe just feel yourself closer to the end than the beginning then you stand in your kitchen and bake.
If you need to release physically. Find yourself a gym with a punching bag and get to punching, kicking, slapping, or whatever you need to do.
Maybe you just need to scream. Go to wherever your screaming place is and scream.
It’s all good to vent to friends/family, but when it’s all said, you still have to get through your pandemic how you get through your pandemic but don’t leave God out of the process.