My friend wrote about a recent bike ride that she started the ride strong but during the last hour, she needed to take frequent breaks. She was frustrated and disappointed about how quickly she became tired. But when they got back to the car, she realized that the front tire had popped and she had been riding on a flat tire for at least an hour. She said “I guess there’s a life lesson there: when tempted to be hard on oneself, it’s always a good idea to first make sure we’re not actually trying to push ourselves along on a flat tire”.

Do you feel as though you are pushing yourself along on a flat tire? God tells us that we will have suffering in our lives. There will be pain, disappointment, and death. We will have flat tires. But he also promises that he will help us through these sufferings by giving us three things: peace, prayer, and hope.

God gives us the peace that we are truly forgiven through the death and life of his son, Jesus Christ. This peace is not just a “feel-good” emotional kind of peace, because this peace doesn’t come from a human—it comes from God, through Jesus. This peace gives us strength and confidence to work through challenges in this sinful world.

God also gives us “access” to him through prayer. He wants us to come to him with any fear or need, and he promises to hear us. We can come to him at any hour, all day. While we may not always get the end result that we hope for, we know that God listens and answers.

Finally, God gives us hope. He gives us hope for the future—not only hope for our life on earth but the hope that we will be in heaven after our sufferings in this world are over. This type of hope isn’t a wish. It is not the same as when we say something like “I hope I get the job”, or “I hope it doesn’t rain today”. This type of hope is already a “done deal”. We know that we will go to heaven. This hope is reliable because God is reliable.

So we can look at our problems and trials of this world with different eyes. When we feel like we are pushing along on a flat tire, we can remember the peace that we are forgiven. We can come to God in prayer for strength to endure and persevere. And we can rejoice that, no matter the outcome of the earthly suffering, we have hope for our future in heaven.