When life throws you curveballs and frustration starts creeping in, there’s one powerful shift that can transform everything. It’s not about mustering more willpower or trying harder. It’s about understanding something deeper about faith, love, and how God sees you.

Your Faith Is Built on Understanding God’s Love

Here’s something that might surprise you: your faith is directly connected to how much you understand God’s love for you. If you don’t truly grasp how much God loves you, your faith will naturally be weak. You’ll constantly wonder if this is the time He lets you stumble, if this is when He abandons you, or if He’ll let you fall flat on your face.

But when you believe and understand what the Bible tells you about His love, everything changes. He knows the number of hairs on your head. He knew you before you were in the womb. You are His beloved, and the job of the beloved is simply to be loved. How incredible is that? Your primary job is just to be loved.

When you truly know that God loves you more than your spouse, more than your children, more than anyone has ever loved you, then you can have faith that whatever is happening in your life is going to work out. You’ll have faith that you’re going to win because you have faith in the one who loves you unconditionally.

Reframe Your Situations with Divine Perspective

When you know the Father loves you, you can look at your situations completely differently. Instead of thinking “Oh no, not again” or “I can’t believe this is happening,” you can ask yourself: I wonder what this situation is for?

If you believe that God allows in His wisdom what He could easily prevent in His power, then every situation becomes an opportunity to discover His purpose. You stop letting the enemy have his way through stress, worry, anxiety, and fear. You recognize when the enemy is trying to kick your camera off, silence your microphone, or give you a sore throat right before you’re supposed to speak.

The enemy wants you stressed, worried, anxious, and fearful. But instead of falling into that trap, ask better questions: God, what are you doing? What does this mean to you? What does this mean for our relationship?

The Questions That Change Everything

Here’s the move that works every time when frustration hits: ask different questions. These aren’t just any questions, these are the questions that will say goodbye to frustration forever:

Lord, what is my part in this? Whether it’s a big situation, someone reaching out to you, a project, or an existing relationship, ask what role God wants you to play.

How do you want me to position myself? Sometimes God will show you exactly how to approach a situation.

What do you want me to think? Your thoughts matter, and God wants to align them with His perspective.

Are we partnering in this situation? Remember, you’re not alone in any challenge you face.

What’s the outcome? Sometimes God reveals the end result, sometimes He gives you a promise, and sometimes you just get the next step. All of these are valuable.

James 1:5 promises that when you lack wisdom, ask and it will be given to you liberally and without reproach. That means you can’t ask too many times. You have unlimited lifelines with God.

Turn Frustration into Celebration

Here’s the secret to getting the best out of frustration: let it turn into celebration. Frustration is actually a clue, a nudge from the Lord saying, Hey, maybe there’s a different way to think, act, and feel about this thing right here.

When you stop being frustrated and start celebrating, you’ll be in a completely different space, and so will your circumstances.

Focus on Love, Not Faith

Don’t focus on trying to build your faith. Focus on understanding His love. When people say “I don’t have the faith for this lawsuit, this health challenge, this family situation,” they’re looking at it backwards.

You don’t concentrate on faith. You focus on His love. If you understand how much He loves you, if you understand that He sent His son when we didn’t deserve it, then you’ll have faith naturally. Without that understanding, faith will always be shaky.

Thank the Father for helping you understand that He truly loves you and will never leave or forsake you.

Focus on Delight, Not Discipline

Just like you shouldn’t focus on faith but on love, don’t focus on discipline. Focus on delight. When you delight in what you should be doing, discipline becomes easy.

Instead of forcing yourself through activities you hate, pray: Father, thank you for helping me delight in reading your word. Father, thank you for helping me delight in the activities I should be doing.

With delight, everything becomes easier. You’ll find yourself naturally drawn to the things that move you forward.

Walk in Your Identity

Remember who you are and whose you are. When you accepted Christ, He began abiding in you. The Holy Spirit is with you at all times. The Lord is at your right hand, so you will not be shaken. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

You know these verses, but do you live them? There’s a difference between knowing what verses say and knowing what they’re saying.

Think about it this way: if you had an older sibling at school who was known as a great fighter, someone everyone respected and feared, wouldn’t you walk a little differently? You’d have more confidence because of who had your back.

Now multiply that scenario by infinity. You can walk powerfully because of whose you are and who is with you.

Choose to Believe in God’s Goodness

Like David facing Goliath, you can choose to believe in the goodness of the Lord. David said, I would have despaired unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

He chose the positive over the negative. He chose to believe there was goodness of the Lord in his situation, and he was going to see it.

What if you believed in the goodness of the Lord? What if you believed He loved you? What would that financial stress, that difficult boss, that challenging relationship, or that health issue look like if you believed those two things?

The Message Bible puts it beautifully: You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you, there’s more of God. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the one most dear to you.

When frustration hits, remember: you have a choice. You can ask different questions, focus on His love instead of your circumstances, and watch as frustration transforms into faith-filled expectation.