When You Feel Like Everything Is Against You

Why is everything in my life so exasperatingly difficult? I bemoaned as I stood on the street
corner by the university, waiting to cross the intersection. I envied the drivers whizzing by while
I walked two miles to pick up my seven-month-old daughter from the sitter’s house. I can’t even afford to take the city bus, I reminded myself. My thoughts continued to spiral downward as I quickened my pace. If I get hit by a bus, I don’t have health insurance. With my closest living relative hundreds of miles away, who would take care of my baby if something happened to me?

As a single mom on welfare, my life looked and felt like the tail end of everything.

Perhaps that is why I resonate so deeply with the story of Jacob.
Jacob thought his most beloved son Joseph had been dead for decades, torn in pieces by wild
animals. His country was now in the middle of a dire famine that threatened his family with
starvation. When his other sons traveled to Egypt to secure food, Pharoah’s second in command
bound his second oldest son Simeon in a foreign prison and demanded to see his youngest son
Benjamin. Now, it looked like Benjamin would also be taken from him as he traveled to Egypt to
satisfy the perplexing demands of Pharaoh’s second in command.
Bereaved and bereft, Jacob bewails, “All these things are against me” (Genesis 42: 36 NKJV)

Can you relate?

However, Jacob’s lament could not have been more false. Even as he grieved that his gray head would
go to the grave in sorrow, he had no idea his missing son Joseph was very much alive. Not only
alive but second in command in Egypt to Pharaoh. The son he thought was dead would unite his
                  whole family, including Simeon and Benjamin. God had anointed Joseph with the plan and the provision to save not                              only his family from starvation but the entire nation of Egypt.

When his sons revealed that Joseph was alive, Jacob almost fainted as he struggled to believe the
game-changing news. On his way to Egypt to see Joseph, whom he thought had been dead for
decades, God promised He would make Jacob a great nation. What a divine reversal from “All
these things are against me!”

Feeling like every dream for my life had died as a single mom on welfare, I could not have
imagined the preciousness of the “BFF” relationship I share with my daughter. Or the career I
have had for the past 25 years as a university professor. Or being happily married. Or writing
Divine Reversal, the story of my devastating-turned-amazing transformation through Christ. Or
my daughter partnering with me to share the hope that pain does not have to have the last word.
What a divine reversal from my life looking like and feeling like the tail end of everything!

Therefore the message I want to impart, not only from the story of Jacob but from what I have directly experienced, is this:

When it seems like everything is against you, God is most
assuredly for you (Psalm 56: 9)! And if God is for you, who can be against you (Romans 8: 31)?

Will you allow these truths to sink deep into your soul?

God is for you! Right now.

His plans for you are grander than you can conceive. When it seems the most unlikely.

What will you choose to believe about your life today?
Will you shift your focus from the complexity of your problems to the BIGNESS of God?
Will you trust that God has “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope
and a future (Jeremiah 29: 11 NIV)?

COMMENT BELOW AND LET US KNOW WHAT YOU’RE BELIEVING FOR YOUR LIFE AND YOURE SHIFTING YOUR FOCUS TO!