How Your Faith Can Grow in Life's Transitions

If you are facing one of life’s transitions, God can use it to grow your faith. My faith has grown through both the good transitions and the hard transitions, because God used them to draw me closer to him.

Maybe you are facing a hard transition right now. I understand how it’s hard to find hope in one of life’s tough transitions. But if you look closely enough, you will see that God is using your current transition to grow your faith and build your character.

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Spiritual Growth in Life’s Transitions

But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Matthew 13:23 (NIV)

Are you in a season of transitions? Life is full of transitions. Some are good, like graduating, getting a new job or having a baby. Others are tough, like facing a breakup, dealing with the empty nest or grieving a loss. No matter what season we are in, we are usually dealing with some type of transition.

Transitions can bring both joy and stress. Sometimes joy comes first, then stress follows. Sometimes we face a stressful transition and find joy later.

Our life transitions are custom-made opportunities for our faith to grow. God uses those times of change to remind us that we need him. We aren’t very good at handling transitions on our own, and God uses the voids in our transitions to draw us closer to him.

My Life Lesson

As a gardener, I’ve learned that different seeds need different growing conditions to thrive. Some seeds, like cucumber and tomato seeds, must have warm soil for growing quickly. Hard seeds of cole crops, such as peas and kale, can be planted in cold soil, because they do better that way. Other seeds, like native wildflower seeds, do best when planted in the fall. They need the thaw-freeze, thaw-freeze cycles to slowly open them up and help them burrow deeper into the ground.

Depending on our life transitions, our faith grows in different ways. In some of our life transitions, we need “warm” soil to grow best. These are the seasons that start with joy, then stress follows to draw us closer to God. In other life transitions, our faith grows best with “cold” soil. The hard seeds of our hearts soften in stress first, then we experience a joyful harvest later. At other times, our transitions last for longer periods, bringing us through the cycles of joy and stress for deeper growth.

Whatever transition you are facing, make sure to draw closer to God in it. As the verse tells us, our faith grows the most when we hear God’s Word and apply it to our lives. Study the soil in your heart during this time of transition. Is it ready to receive the seed of God’s Word? If so, you will experience spiritual growth, no matter if you are experiencing joy or stress in your current transition.

Prayer

Dear Father in heaven,

I am so thankful that you never leave me or forsake me, no matter what type of transition I’m facing.

Jesus, make the soil of my heart soft, watered and fertile in this season I’m in. Plant the truth of your Word in my heart so I can look back and see how much my faith grew in this time.

Holy Spirit, help me apply the truth of Scripture to my daily life. I trust that you will give me the peace that passes all understanding in this transition I’m facing as I hear the word and understand it with your help.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Whether joyful or sorrowful, our life transitions are custom-made opportunities for our faith to grow. #transitions #spiritualgrowth Click To Tweet