Dealing with a crisis, a major life change or major setback is an inescapable aspect of life. Whether it is a health crisis, a financial setback, loss of a job or a broken relationship there comes a time when each of us must face the necessity of bouncing back from the unimaginable. Resilience is defined as the “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.” Resilience is the difference between the person whose response to a disaster incapacitates them leaving them unable to cope with life and another individual in the same situation who responds with a determination to come back and rise above the obstacles.
How we cope with adversity and react to a crisis demonstrates our ability to be resilient and recover from adversity and be ready to take on the challenges of life. Studies have shown that resilient people share a number of skills and abilities that keep them from being overwhelmed and overcome by their difficulties. This site will explore some of the important characteristics of resilience which can in fact be developed and make one more capable of moving beyond the difficulties of life. As you proceed through the following pages, I want you to know that these truths have been lived and applied in real life and I am a testimony that these principles do in fact work.
There are many ways we encounter those life-altering crises that have profound impact on our lives from that moment on. In my four decades of ministry I have encountered many people at the crossroad of a crisis, where they could either pick up the pieces of their lives and move on even stronger, or they could tumble even deeper into the crisis and experience disasterous consequences in many other aspects of their lives. Consider a few of the ways a crisis crashes into our world:
- The father of four children who came home from work to find a note from his wife explaining that she had fallen in love with his best friend and was leaving him and the children.
- The woman who discovered her husband had been embezzling money from his business and had not paid payroll taxes on their employees in over a year, and is now facing a long prison sentence.
- The family who learns of their child’s rare form of cancer with only the grim prognosis of experimental treatment options.
- The family being torn apart by a young mother’s meth addiction and recent arrest that threatens everything they hold dear.
- The 55 year old man that is informed that after a long career, his company has decided to lay him off from the only work he has ever known. He is too young to retire and too old for many of the job opportunities available.
- The family struggling to get by on their low wage jobs, only to be made homeless by a house fire, for which they were unable to afford the insurance.
In each of these circumstances, the temptation is to fall apart and be overwhelmed by the problem before us. The problem is that this only deepens the crisis. We have all know people that have faced crises like these, and rather than fall apart, they have responded with amazing resilience. Resilience enables us to face the problem, seek out real solutions and be able to get back up, learn from the experience, and move on stronger than we were before. While we may be tempted to chalk this up to some unate ability to recover from devastating circumstances, I believe it is possible for everyone to develop greater resilience.
Biblical resilience is the understanding that the Bible provides us with the very tools needed to be truly resilient. This blog will examine a number of key resources all of us need in order to be resilient and will also find that the Bible provides important insights and the strength needed to bounce back one more time!