Social media is a huge way for people to share their lives to friends, family, even people you don’t know or hope to know. Its apart of life now. I remember when social media didn’t even exist. Now its almost as though I can’t function without it. We share everything online and we mainly share the parts of our lives that are good, glamorous, fun and down right awesome. We share a lot. But we only share the parts of ourselves that we want people to see. We want others to rejoice in our good times and accomplishments, and feel as though they are apart of our lives. But they never ever are truly apart of our lives, because we only share what we want others to see. When we look at just about any social media site, its smiling faces, good times, great photos, time spent with friends, boyfriends, husbands, kids, family, its all laughs. The reality is that isn’t us. Now don’t misunderstand, I do think we should share what we want, especially those happy times, but just know those not so good times are not bad. In the end that’s what helps shape us. That’s what helps us get to those happy, laughable, shareable moments we choose to give to the world. Everyone has a story. And those stories make us who we are.
The bible tells us in Romans 5:3-4 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. This scripture tells us that in our tough times in life that in the end it will make us better, stronger, hopeful. Looking back on those hard times is something we really don’t want to do. No one really likes to bring up the lowest moments of their lives, we all would just rather forget it. And that’s ok. But lets not forget how those dark times have made us better. Unfortunately we can’t go through life without having those tough days, so the plus side is that God gives us everything we need to get through all of it. (Psalm 46:1 – God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.) When we need to be stronger, when we need grow, when we need faith, we have to be tested and that’s the reality of it. The bible reads in 1 Peter 1:7, Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, its your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory. This tells us we will be ok. We will overcome and we will have victory just don’t give up.