Due to the coronavirus pandemic that has surfaced these past couple months and with everything shutting down, it has impacted many believers around the world. Some would say their faith has lessened or they do not feel as close to God as before. During these past couple months, I have grown a lot and wanted to share some tips and advice for those who desire to maintain their relationship with God.
Tip 1: Continue maintaining your faith by staying within the word. In any relationship,important aspects of maintaining that relationship is communication and knowledge. Thus, if God is our spiritual father then we should have a desire to continue learning about HIm. In John 1:1, He describes Himself as the word. Thus, if we want to know what He desires from us, and if we want to get to know Him then we must continue learning the word of God. I recommend joining in depth bible studies or good devotionals that helps you grow and keep accountable for faith maintenance.
Tip 2: FInd joy in learning the word. Learning the word by yourself can be hard. The bible is like a puzzle. We can see in Proverbs 30:5 that the word of God is flawless thus any questions we might have regarding the bible, where can the answer be found? Within the bible. Every book and every chapter is aligned and they connect to make one entire picture, to create one unified message. There will be pieces that fit together to give us understanding, a clearer picture. Example: Isaiah 7:14, there will be a virgin who surrounds a child? Where can we find the answer to it? In Matthew chapter 1. Therefore let’s make sure we understand the bible piece by piece until we understand God’s message clearly. Reading the bible book to book can be boring if you’re just reading it for your own personal knowledge and history, but when you find the deep things of God, see all the connections then the bible can be fun and amazing to read! Also, wouldn’t it be hard to do a puzzle alone? Puzzles with over 1000+ pieces can be difficult and stressful to do alone, but it’s definitely easier and more fun with others! Imagine the bible, there’s over 31,000 verses. Finding a study group that teaches the word, and the connections would be beneficial to maintaining one’s life of faith.
Tip 3: Reflection. This is the biggest thing that has helped me on my journey being able to continue and staying strong during all of this. I like to reflect upon the early christians, the disciples, and the martyrs back then. Although we are facing a deadly disease, the believers back then also faced many hardships, but instead of falling away from God, they grew stronger and persevered. They did not live such easy lives. They did everything they could to spread the gospel, but many people didn’t accept them and instead they were persecuted, mistreated, and even killed. Amongst all that they still carried out God’s work to the point of death, to the point of martyrdom, meaning that they died for the word, for their faith. An example is disciple Peter. When he started off as a disciple, he didn’t have the best faith. He had doubts and even denied Jesus. Later on, his faith grew after learning the word from Jesus. He would go out day and night spreading the Gospel. Disciple Peter, in the book of Acts, experienced torture and horrible things in order to preach the Gospel. Furthermore, he was sentenced to be executed on the cross to like Jesus, but because he thought he was unworthy, he requested to be crucified upside down. That’s one example of the many martyrs who sacrificed their lives because they saw value within the Word and believed in God. This is not mentioned to be depressing, but it’s something I reflect on and feel gratitude towards. We should be grateful that we are living in a time where we do not have to die spreading or listening to the word. They saw value within Jesus and the word so they were able to continue learning, preaching, and persevering amongst all those struggles. This is what keeps me going. I do not experience the hardships they did back then. If I compare my hardships to the believers back then, it’s little to nothing thus I should make the minimum effort to learn and hold onto God and the Word. I’m praying that those who feel more distant from God can draw closer to him instead during this pandemic.
