4 Short Stories About Trusting God in Difficult Times
Last Updated on August 20, 2024 by Alicia Michelle
Keeping faith in God during hard times can feel overwhelming, but this is exactly when trusting Him matters most. Finding a short story about trusting God in difficult times can inspire us and help us see God's faithfulness, especially when we need help processing our feelings before God.
Through personal experience and biblical accounts, we learn that trials are often the catalyst for deepening our faith and transforming our perspective. But I get it–the journey to walk with God through hard times isn't always easy!
In this post, I'll share four short stories about faith that not only highlight how our family leaned into God through challenging circumstances but also show how He built joy and strength in our hearts through trials. These are true stories about faith in hard times—ones that are grounded in real-life struggles like parenting challenges, chronic illness, medical crises, and job loss.
If you’re looking for inspiring faith stories that will remind you to trust God, these will encourage you to cling to Him during difficult times. Through each story, I hope you’ll see how God has shown us His faithfulness and taught us to rejoice even in the hardest moments.
But before we dive in, let me offer you a powerful resource to help you on your journey. If you're ready to deepen your faith, discover joy even in trials, and know how to manage the emotional ups and downs that come during hard times, be sure to check out my book, Emotional Confidence: Three Simple Steps to Manage Emotions with Science and Scripture.
This practical resource shares my 3-step method for working through an emotion that I've taught to tens of thousands (and that really works)!. Emotional Confidence is the perfect book for anyone looking to use both science and faith to partner with God to work through their emotions during a hard time. Learn more and get your copy here.
Are You Ready to Keep Faith in God Through Your Trial?
You’re not just here for some feel-good stories, right? You want real change in your life. You want God to help you keep the faith through that tough trial you're facing right now.
I get it. And here's the truth: God can absolutely bring you joy even during the darkest times. But in order to experience that, you have to choose to trust Him, cling to Him, and seek His ways. You can’t just read these stories of faith in God during hard times and feel encouraged for a moment—real transformation happens when you apply these lessons to your life.
So, are you serious about trusting God through your trials? Then let’s get into it.
Emotional Confidence: The Key to Keeping Faith Through a Trial
If you want lasting change, you need to let God transform you from the inside out by immersing yourself in His truth. But here’s something that many people miss: you have to be honest with yourself about why it’s so hard to keep faith and joy during difficult seasons. Only by acknowledging your doubts and seeking God's wisdom can you move forward.
In my book, Emotional Confidence, I walk you through practical steps to help you cultivate emotional resilience and stay grounded in God's promises. Consider this a vital tool to help you not just survive but thrive in the midst of trials.
4 Inspiring Stories About Finding Faith in God During Hard Times
I'm going to share a few of the opportunities we've had to experience joy through trials–just in the past 4 years!
Through each story I'm going to share Bible verses that encouraged us and talk about how God has used each difficult trial to teach us how to “count it all joy during trials” (James 1:2-4).
I pray that these inspiring stories about faith during hard times will greatly encourage you to trust God through your challenges as well (and to even learn how to rejoice in trials).
More than anything, I pray that these stories will encourage you to discover a personal relationship with Jesus, since knowing God is the best way to find hope and joy through trials.
Inspiring Story #1: Discovering How to Have Joy During Intense Parenting Struggles
As a mom to four kids, I could write so much about the parenting challenges we've had so far. But the one that stands out the most happened from April 2014 to April 2015 when our oldest son went through some extreme behavioral issues which required professional intervention.
In a nutshell, my life as a mom became wrapped around helping my then 11-year-old son (who has ADHD and Autism) learn how to cope and function as he went through some extreme emotional issues.
He became nearly impossible to handle. Not just “I-don't-want-to-do-this” defiant, but yelling at me, throwing things, and constantly causing a scene in our home. It became downright impossible to do homeschool with him (let alone to help our three other kids who were then 9, 6 and 2).
I felt incredibly helpless. Every single moment of every day was a all-out battle. No matter how fervently I prayed for things to change, each day's events repeated themselves and day after day faded into the next. I was utterly spent–emotionally, spiritually and physically.
To top it off, my hard-working husband traveled nearly 50 percent of the time. He was incredibly supportive, but he wasn't physically there a lot. So that meant I spent a lot of time alone in the trenches of this trial, carrying this immense emotional and physical burden on my own.
Eventually our precious son was hospitalized for several days. It required loads of trust and faith in God in order to bring him there, but we knew it was the best option for him.
Afterward, he was assigned to a special therapy 3 days a week for 4 hours at a time (at a location over an hour from our home). Getting him to and from therapy (while finding childcare and rides for my other 3 kids) was extremely taxing in itself.
I felt like a zombie many days as I spent every last ounce of energy trying to keep life going for our all four of the kids (who of course still needed my constant attention).
God (and Bible verses about trials and hard times) became my only solace. I prayed continually and asked God to help my faith to be strong and to even have joy during this parenting trial.
God taught me many things about moment-by-moment faith during that life challenge. Specifically, God used the story of how He fed the Israelites through the desert with his daily manna (Exodus 16:1-20) to teach me how he was going to provide for me in this season one day at a time.
There were times that I thought I wasn't physically going to make it.
But I saw how he built supernatural joy into my heart through this trial. For the first time, he showed me how to really have joy during trials.
And as it turns out, those lessons I learned then about joy in trials were ones I would greatly need for the future.
Inspiring Story #2: Faith in God During Chronic Illness
Fast forward less than a year later, to July 2015. We were just getting back on our feet after helping our son when my normally-healthy husband was diagnosed–quite unexpectedly–with Type 1 Diabetes.
At the time of diagnosis, we knew it was a miracle that he was alive since he came to the hospital with a blood sugar that was more than 5 times the normal amount (the nurses said that most people with his numbers were either dead or in a coma).
We had no idea his blood sugar was so high! We had just noticed his extreme weight loss and extreme thirst. But during a routine doctor's visit, our physician followed a hunch after noticing my husband had a “fruity” odor to his breath (which we later learned is a sign of high blood sugar).
After 3 days in the ICU, we were suddenly introduced to his new life of counting carbs, testing his blood sugar several times a day, glucose injections and more pills than I could count. Scary, life changing stuff that radically altered every part of our life.
You can read more about that experience here, and find out God not only taught us about how to have faith during hard times but how to grow closer as a couple during times of crisis.
We clung to Bible verses about trials and hard times in order to survive those first few months of Diabetes. And of course, since Type 1 Diabetes is an incurable chronic illness, we still must cling to verses like “count it all joy” to find joy through the daily trial of Diabetes.
Inspiring Story #3: Trusting God During Job Loss and Unemployment
Our most recent trial ended when my husband lost his job and we were unemployed for over 18 months.
Talk about trusting God for provision! It was incredibly humbling and difficult to not know when my husband would get a job, if I was going to go back to work instead, or if we were going to move out of state.
And of course there was all kinds of opportunities for fear, doubt and worry to steal my faith in God.
How would we pay our bills? When would this trial end? Why was this happening to us? Questions like these during a trial could rule my heart and wreak havoc on my emotions if I let them.
There were many tear-filled days where my faith (and joy levels) were stretched.
But I kept reading my Bible and talking to God each day about everything I was going through. I took it day by day, moment by moment like I'd learned a few years back through that parenting trial.
And I chose to believe, over and and over, in the foundational truth that God loved me and my family no matter what.
I believed with all my heart that His plans were good for me and not meant to harm me (Jeremiah 29:11).
And because of this, I decided that yes, I was going to count it all joy like James 1:2-8 says.
There were many ups and downs in the process! I certainly didn't do it perfectly. But I'm sharing the choices I made so that you can be encouraged that you can make these choices too.
Inspiring Story #4: Finding Joy Despite a Life-Threatening Medical Condition
About a year into the unemployment trial (in late July 2017), a new trial was added to our lives (quite suddenly, I might add). This time I was the one who had her life threatened by disease.
P.S. If you'd like to hear me to share this story, I tell it in this podcast episode.
I'd had a headache for weeks. I went to the emergency room just to make sure I was OK. That's when the doctors told me that I'd developed an incredibly serious condition–a vertebral artery dissection.
I was immediately taken by ambulance to a speciality intensive care unit and spent the next few days hearing scary words like “stroke” and “you are lucky to be alive.”
Our family's world stopped. Everything on my overcrowded schedule was cleared. And once I got out of the hospital, I spent my days literally laying flat on my back with all kinds of highly powerful medicine racing through my veins (some of it coming from the self-administered injections I had to take round the clock).
It was a scary time. But God continued to speak to me about joy in trials. Of course the situation was very difficult (I still had four kids to take care of and a ministry and house to run). Plus my health was still incredibly unstable and I had ongoing migraines that wouldn't let up.
But I knew God and how His character is to use difficult circumstances to create good things in our lives (Romans 8:28). I believed that He had a purpose for my scary health conditions. And so I clung to Bible verses about trials and hard times and I again, chose to count it all joy.
And then, one week later, the unthinkable happened. This time I had a mini stroke and was taken back to the emergency room. A CAT scan confirmed that my other vertebral artery now had a dissection!
The doctors couldn't believe that I now had a second dissection (and had lived to tell about it)! They had never seen anything like it.
On the ambulance ride to the hospital (as my body was shaking violently from the stroke symptoms) I prayed continually for God's peace. I truly didn't know if I was going to make it.
“You have a reason for me to go through this, Lord,” I prayed. “Should I live through this, please use this trial to bring joy in my own heart, and help me to spread your message of how to have joy through trials to as many people as possible.”
God saved me that day. And I am so grateful for what He has continued to teach me about joy through trials as I am now past my recovery period and have been forced to create a new, slower-paced life for myself.
There are times when the headaches (a result of the dissections) come back and I'm forced to clear my schedule and rest for a few days.
But God has taught me an indescribable joy that brings tears to my eyes. Oh how my character has been shaped through this experience! Oh what closeness I've developed with God as a result of this trial!
Today I can truly say that, yes, trials are difficult and can be horribly painful to endure; but that because of God's presence through them all, you truly can “count it all joy when you face trials” because there is so much beautiful spiritual fruit that comes from a trial!
Videos: More Stories of How to Have a Christ-Centered Mindset in a Trial
Navigating life's trials requires more than just perseverance; it requires a transformation of our thoughts and emotions to align with God's promises. In this section, we delve into various facets of maintaining a Christ-centered mindset through challenging times, each illustrated by these videos from my Christian Mindset Coach YouTube Channel.
1. Managing Angry Thoughts and Surrendering to God
First, let's tackle anger—a common reaction during trials. This video guides you through understanding how to manage angry thoughts effectively and surrender those feelings to God, paving the way for peace and resilience.
2. How Unmanaged Emotions Nearly Destroyed My Life
In this deeply personal video, I share my own journey through overwhelming emotions that nearly destroyed my life. This testimony sheds light on the transformative power of God’s grace and the emotional healing that is possible when we fully embrace His ways. I share the full story here in this podcast episode.
3.Working Through Grief + Painful Emotions with Ashley Opliger
Grief and pain are emotions that can profoundly affect our spiritual and emotional health. Ashley Opliger shares her insights on working through these tough emotions, offering strategies that help us find healing in Christ even in our darkest moments. Listen to the entire podcast episode here.
4. Life Transitions: When Life Changes + You Feel Lost + Overwhelmed
I loved this conversation with Nicki Koziarz about how we can follow God through transition seasons, especially when we feel lost during life's challenging moments. Watch the video snippet from podcast episode 214 to gain insights into navigating life's inevitable changes with faith and grace.
5. Can Boundaries and Limitations Be a Gift? with Sara Hagerty
In this full-length video of podcast episode 257, Sara Hagerty discusses how setting boundaries and recognizing our limitations can unexpectedly become gifts. This is such an important concept when we're trying to have faith in hard times! This conversation will challenge you to rethink how boundaries can aid in developing a healthier, God-centered perspective on life’s trials.
6. Stop Saying “It's Going to Be Hard!” for Less Stress
Transitioning your mindset is crucial for managing life's stresses, especially during hard times. This video explains why shifting away from a doom-laden outlook to one of hope and positivity can significantly reduce stress and foster a more resilient spirit.
7. Awesome Mindset Shift When Worry Strikes + Life Is Scary
Finally, let's explore how to shift your mindset when worry strikes during hard times. This uplifting video provides practical tips and spiritual wisdom to help transform your anxious thoughts into opportunities for growth and trust in God.
Each of these videos serves as a beacon of hope and instruction, guiding you through the necessary mindset shifts to maintain faith and joy during life's trials.
Other Stories About How to Have Faith in God During Hard Times
I've written a few other inspiring stories about faith in trials, including the loss of my grandpa and the untimely death of a good friend; and a time in college when I dealt with depression and suicide.
- When A Loved One Dies Unexpectedly
- Why Knowing That Jesus Loves You Changes Everything During a Trial
Christian Mindset Coach Podcast Episodes About How to Stay Strong in a Trial:
- Ep 21: How to Find Hope Through Hard Times (or Through Trials)
- Ep 5: How to Find Hope When Battling Chronic Illness
- Ep 35: Finding Hope After Miscarriage with Abby Burgess
- Ep 57: When You Don't Feel God + Wonder Where He Is
- Ep 63: Finding Unshakeable Hope in Uncertain Times
- Ep 64: When You Doubt Your Faith and Have Questions About God with Robin Dance
- Ep 69: What's Going On Inside? Learning About the 4 Parts of Self
Other Posts About Trusting God Through Hard Times:
Next Step: Learn How to Manage Your Emotions as You Grow Your Faith in God During Difficult Times
Navigating life's tough seasons can often leave us feeling overwhelmed and uncertain. If you find yourself struggling to manage your emotions during these hard times, my book Emotional Confidence offers a biblical and scientifically supported way to regain control and find peace.
In Emotional Confidence: 3 Simple Steps to Manage Emotions with Science and Scripture, I provide a three-step method designed to help you during the most challenging periods: acknowledge your feelings without judgment, process these emotions through the clarifying lens of God’s truth, and courageously choose a scriptural response. This approach is particularly effective in helping you cope with emotional overwhelm, overthinking, and avoidance—common reactions during difficult life events.
This book is packed with practical exercises, inspirational client stories, and scientific evidence to support you on your journey to emotional resilience. By partnering these tools with your faith, you will discover how to transform your emotional trials into a source of strength and confidence.
Are you ready to change how you face hard times? Get my book Emotional Confidence today and start your journey toward managing your emotions with faith and confidence, no matter what challenges you face.
Thank you, Joel! I’m thrilled to hear that God used my story about having faith in hard times to encourage you during this tough season.
Thank you for sharing your difficult trials with us. I love our GOD with all my heart and suddenly I am not scare of two chronic Heath issues. I have heart disease requires a pace maker. Our second trial my son has a scary health issue. God is blessing me and my husband with strong faith, love, and HIs peace I pray and thank him every day. I learned to live moment by moment. One day at a time.
Hi Kennedy! Thank you so much for sharing this. Praising God that these stories about faith in hard times encouraged you! God bless you as well.
This is powerful and word of the season during this hard times people are facing globally. God bless you Michelle
Jennifer, I’m so glad to hear this! May God bless you as you lean on Him through this hard time!
You have really been a big help to me with your experience, I feel much stronger and not alone. May God bless you
Christine, thank you so much for your kind words! And I appreciate how you are going to share with your readers about how keeping faith in God through trials is possible. Blessings to you!
Alicia, I love this post and your heart behind it. What a beautiful testimony of what trials can do for our faith if we will choose to trust and allow God to form the character of Jesus in us. Thank you for sharing your struggles and triumphs. I am going to link to this post from my current blog post so the community at The Beautiful Journey can come visit and be blessed!
With love,
Christine