Strategies For Dealing with a Crisis: Resilience
Over the next several days, I want us to look at some strategies for handling a crisis and the biblical truths behind each strategy. The first strategy I want to look at is strengthening our resilience. In its simplest definition, resilience refers to the ability to withstand hardships during a crisis. It is the idea of quickly returning to their normal frame of mind when a crisis arises. The thing about resilience is that it is like a muscle that needs to be strengthened. Without hardships, our resilience will not develop, just like our muscles will not develop well if not used. This is the very concept that James 1:2-4 discusses. The testing of our faith produces endurance, which helps us bounce back in times of crisis.
As we think about how this looked in the days of Scripture, Joseph was an excellent example of resilience. He was sold to the Egyptians by his brothers and thrown in jail, and yet later, after interpreting a dream, he was given the task of saving all the land in the famine, including his own family. Joseph had a rough start, but time and time again, he bounced back because he knew who he served, and he relied on God to help him through his own crisis. As we think about the current crisis, we are facing, or any crisis for that matter, let’s look at it as a time of strengthening our own resilience and look to God as our help. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:7-10 that we have been given treasures in jars of clay to show the power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.
This is what it looks like to be resilient. Though this current virus may afflict us, we shall not be crushed because we have God. Though the crisis we face may leave us perplexed, it shall not drive us to despair because we have the hope of Christ on our side. Let’s allow this crisis we are currently going through, or any crisis we may face in the future, to produce in us a resilience that can only be the result of the testing of our faith so that we may grow in our Lord and Savior.
