Every New Year's eve my wife and I spend the evening with the Villanueva Family. Every year end we would take time to look back on the previous year and count the blessings that we have received, and share our expectant dreams for the incoming year. It's a nice tradition that you might want to incorporate in your family's next New Year celebration.
Going back to my story. The latter part of our 2014 was a very rough one for us. Just when I have mustered all the confidence and courage to pursue a calling to become a full-time entrepreneur, the next thing i know is that we are hitting rock bottom. Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months. It is hard, specially if you are the bread winner of the family. The income comes and goes, but the bills remained coming. During that new years eve sharing time, it is very hard to look back at the passing year and see the blessing in it, looking passed the hard days that came by. Just to give you a view, try imagining getting laid off from your job just a few months before Christmas, or breaking up with your GF/BF, and then while you are still in that downward curve count the blessings you have received in the past 12 months. It's somewhat close to that.
But I praise God for a number of things:
1. I have been saved from my sins and was made a child of the maker of this world
2. I have been blessed with a beautiful and supportive wife
3. I have a decent honest living
4. New business partners are coming in every month.
5. A book project offer from a famous publishing house.
and the list goes on.
I am always reminded by the life of Job. Here is a man of integrity and dedication to God, that despite his circumstances he looks beyond it and sees a just and righteous father that cares for him and his well being. I always carry with me the verse in Job "The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!" We are always ready to accept good things from God, but reject the bad things that happens in our life thinking that we do not deserve it. We often forget that it is through the bad/hard times that our character is developed. It is through these times also that we are tested so that our impurities will arise and is scraped away, so that we can become more and more like Christ.
Have you been faithful in the midst of trial and hardship? Keep it up! It is during these times that your praises to the one true creator comes up to him as the sweetest smelling incense.
Going back to my story. The latter part of our 2014 was a very rough one for us. Just when I have mustered all the confidence and courage to pursue a calling to become a full-time entrepreneur, the next thing i know is that we are hitting rock bottom. Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months. It is hard, specially if you are the bread winner of the family. The income comes and goes, but the bills remained coming. During that new years eve sharing time, it is very hard to look back at the passing year and see the blessing in it, looking passed the hard days that came by. Just to give you a view, try imagining getting laid off from your job just a few months before Christmas, or breaking up with your GF/BF, and then while you are still in that downward curve count the blessings you have received in the past 12 months. It's somewhat close to that.
But I praise God for a number of things:
1. I have been saved from my sins and was made a child of the maker of this world
2. I have been blessed with a beautiful and supportive wife
3. I have a decent honest living
4. New business partners are coming in every month.
5. A book project offer from a famous publishing house.
and the list goes on.
I am always reminded by the life of Job. Here is a man of integrity and dedication to God, that despite his circumstances he looks beyond it and sees a just and righteous father that cares for him and his well being. I always carry with me the verse in Job "The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!" We are always ready to accept good things from God, but reject the bad things that happens in our life thinking that we do not deserve it. We often forget that it is through the bad/hard times that our character is developed. It is through these times also that we are tested so that our impurities will arise and is scraped away, so that we can become more and more like Christ.
Have you been faithful in the midst of trial and hardship? Keep it up! It is during these times that your praises to the one true creator comes up to him as the sweetest smelling incense.
