Life is not a bed of roses. Even as a Christian, things can go south sometimes. Bills pile up. Opportunities disappear. Relationships break. Plans fall apart. And in those moments, the gap between what you believe about God and what you are actually experiencing can feel painfully wide.
But it is in exactly that gap, between your faith and your circumstances, where the most important decisions of your life are made.
This is not a theoretical reflection. It comes from a real place. And if you are reading this on a Sunday morning carrying something heavy, I hope it meets you where you are.
My Story: The Street in Onitsha
After my NYSC, I got a job in Onitsha, Anambra State. I was far from home, far from family, and there was a season when I was so low financially that I had multiple pressing needs and genuinely did not know where to turn. My family was in Lagos. There was no one nearby to call. I was carrying everything quietly, the way many Nigerians do when they do not want to burden the people they love with problems they cannot immediately solve.
One day, I was walking along Limca Road toward the Africana First Publishers axis when a middle-aged man suddenly stepped into my path. He looked at me with what felt like an unsettling certainty and said words I will never forget. He told me he could see I was going through a lot. And then he offered me a solution. He said if I paid him a certain amount, he would give me an amulet that would give me the power to command money.
I was stunned.
Not just by the boldness of the offer, but by the fact that it came at a moment when I was genuinely vulnerable. That is how the enemy works. Most of the time, he does not show up when you are full, comfortable, and at peace. He shows up in the valley, when your defences are low, and desperation has made certain options look less unreasonable than they normally would.
But something rose inside me in that moment. I remembered my faith. I said no. He persisted, following me briefly, but I walked away quickly and did not look back.
That night, I went home and prayed. Not a long, complicated prayer. Just an honest conversation with God about everything I was carrying. And something shifted. Not immediately in my finances, but in my spirit first. Then gradually, favour began to return. My side business began to move. Doors that had been closed started to open.
Looking back now, I still reflect on that moment on Limca Road. If I had entertained that man’s offer, I genuinely do not know where I would be today. That single decision, made in a moment of pressure, to hold on to God instead of reaching for a shortcut, changed the trajectory of everything that followed.
Why Life Feels Impossible Sometimes — Even for Believers
One of the most honest things the Bible does is refuse to pretend that faith protects you from difficulty. It does not. What it gives you is something far more powerful: a foundation that holds when everything around you is shaking.
Job was described by God himself as a blameless and upright man. Yet Job lost his children, his wealth, and his health in a series of catastrophes that made no earthly sense. He sat in ashes. His friends told him he must have sinned to deserve such suffering. His wife told him to curse God and die.
Job did not understand what was happening. But he held on.
“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” — Job 13:15
That is not the response of a man who has everything figured out. That is the response of a man who has decided that God is still trustworthy even when the evidence around him suggests otherwise. That decision, to trust before you understand, is the very core of what the Bible calls faith.
The Story of Joseph: When the Plan Looks Broken
Few stories in the Bible demonstrate this tension more powerfully than the life of Joseph.
Joseph received a dream from God. He would be a leader. His own brothers would bow before him. Then almost immediately, everything in his life went in the opposite direction.
His brothers threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery in Egypt. He was taken to a foreign land with no rights and no connections. He served faithfully in Potiphar’s house and was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife. He was thrown into prison for something he did not do. And even in prison, when he helped a fellow prisoner by interpreting a dream correctly, that man forgot him for two full years.
From the outside, every single chapter of Joseph’s story looked like failure. Like abandonment. Like proof that the dream was wrong.
But God was working in every chapter.
The pit led to Egypt. Egypt led to Potiphar’s house. Potiphar’s house led to prison. Prison led to Pharaoh. And Pharaoh led to everything God had promised from the beginning.
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” — Genesis 50:20
Joseph could only say those words at the end of the story. In the middle of it, all he had was a choice. Trust God or don’t. He chose to trust, and he held on to that choice through every betrayal, every injustice, and every delay.
That is the invitation sitting in front of every believer who is currently in the middle of a chapter that does not make sense yet.
When God Seems Silent
There is a particular kind of pain that comes not from obvious suffering but from what feels like the silence of God. You pray. Nothing seems to change. You hold on. The situation stays the same. You read your Bible. You go to church. You do everything right. And still, the breakthrough does not come on your schedule.
David knew this feeling intimately.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” — Psalm 22:1
David wrote that. The man described as a man after God’s own heart wrote those words because he genuinely felt abandoned. And yet the same David who wrote that psalm is the one who wrote this:
“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” — Psalm 27:13-14
The waiting is not passive. David says be strong. Take heart. These are active choices made in the absence of visible evidence. The decision to remain confident when nothing around you confirms that confidence is the definition of trusting God when life makes no sense.
The Crossroads Everyone Faces
That man on Limca Road represented something that most Nigerians have encountered in one form or another, though perhaps not always as literally. The crossroads between faith and a shortcut. Between trusting God’s timing and grabbing something that promises immediate relief at a cost you may not fully understand yet.
The shortcuts take many forms. They are not always a man on a street offering an amulet. Sometimes they are financial decisions made out of desperation that compromise your integrity. Sometimes they are relationships entered into for security rather than love. Sometimes they are corners cut professionally because waiting honestly feels like it will cost too much.
The question at every crossroads is the same: do you trust that God’s way, even when it is slower and harder and less immediately satisfying, leads somewhere better than the shortcut?
The Bible answers that question consistently across thousands of years of human stories.
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” — Proverbs 3:5-6
Not lean on your own understanding. That phrase matters because in the moments when life makes no sense, our own understanding is the thing screaming loudest. It is tallying the bills. It is calculating how long you can last. It is presenting you with alternatives that feel rational given the circumstances.
The instruction is not to deny that your situation is difficult. It is to refuse to let your situation be the final word on what is possible.
What Holding On Actually Looks Like
Trusting God in a difficult season is rarely dramatic. It does not always look like a mountain-moving moment of supernatural breakthrough. Most of the time it looks like this:
You pray honestly, even when you do not feel like praying. Not polished, performance prayers. Real conversations with God about exactly what you are carrying and exactly how afraid you are.
You make the right choice at the crossroads, even when the wrong one is right there and promises relief.
You keep doing what you know is right in the small things while waiting for God to move in the big things. Joseph kept serving with excellence in Potiphar’s house. He kept interpreting dreams faithfully in prison. He did not stop being who he was because his circumstances were unjust.
You tell someone. Isolation amplifies despair. One honest conversation with a trusted friend, a pastor, or a fellow believer who will pray with you rather than simply sympathise, can carry you further than weeks of silent suffering.
And you remember. You remember the times God has come through before. Because He has. Every believer reading this has at least one story of a situation they did not think they would survive, that they survived. That is not a coincidence. That is a track record.
A Word for This Sunday
If you are reading this today in a season that makes no sense, I want to say something directly to you.
God has not forgotten your address. The silence you feel is not absence. The delay is not denial. And the difficulty you are in right now is not the end of your story.
The same God who answered prayer on a quiet night in Onitsha, who kept Joseph through the pit and the prison, who met David in the darkest verses of his psalms, is the same God available to you in whatever you are carrying right now.
Hold on. Do not take the shortcut. Do not let desperation decide for you.
Your breakthrough may be one honest prayer away.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” — Jeremiah 29:11
Happy Sunday. Share this with someone who needs it today. God bless you.
