My 2025 Story: Faith Refined, Relationships Tested, God Proven Faithful

Today's devotion is just a simple testimony of my 2025 journey, because it has been one of the most difficult years in my life, from cancer battle, losing of those you once trusted, faith shaken, and dreams all crumble before you, this was my 2025. However, there is a sobering truth I have come to understand more clearly as I walk closer with Christ and that is that your faith has a way of revealing hearts. It's like your faith becomes a mirror, some see hope, others see conviction.

Through the many difficulties this year, one thing is sure God has always been faithful through it all, and I have learned that a genuine devotion to Jesus does not leave people neutral. True faith exposes motives, priorities, and loyalties, both in ourselves and in others. When Christ becomes central in your life, His light has a way of illuminating everything around you. Some are drawn to that light. Others recoil from it.

Jesus prepared us for this reality long before we would ever experience it personally, He said that, If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you.” (John 15:18). This is not persecution complex; it is spiritual reality. When Christ rules your heart, the world loses its grip, and that loss often provokes resistance. In 2025, this truth became more than a verse to me. It became a lived experience.

A Difficult Year, Yet a Faithful God

As I mentioned previously that 2025 has been one of the most difficult years of my life. It was not difficult in one dramatic moment, but in a series of cumulative pressures, to include battle with cancer, unmet expectations, relational fractures, professional challenges, spiritual wrestling, and emotional fatigue. The kind of year that slowly wears you down rather than suddenly breaks you.

There were days I questioned the “why.” Days I prayed prayers that had no words only tears. Days when faith felt less like confidence and more like clinging. Yet through every moment, God remained faithful. Not absent. Not indifferent. Not disengaged, but the very Prescence in my time of need. This is something that every believer will experience, the Scripture assures us: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” (Psalm 34:19). Circumstances may change, but the faithfulness of God remains constant, carrying you through what you cannot carry alone.

Deliverance does not always mean removal from suffering. Sometimes, deliverance means being sustained through it. God did not waste one tear, one disappointment, or one sleepless night. He was present in them all. I've learned that Faith is not proven by how loudly we praise God in comfort, but by how firmly we pray and trust Him in adversity. My younger sibling Glenn often told me that who you truly are in life is revealed when you are faced with adversity. I look at it this way, fire not only refines, but it also shapes.

How Struggle Became a Sacred Invitation

What I once saw as obstacles, God revealed as invitations, calling me into a deeper relationship with Himself. Pain has a way of stripping away illusions. It reveals where our trust truly lies. This year, my struggles forced me to confront uncomfortable truths about self-reliance, expectations, and where I was subtly leaning on things other than God. It's like my struggles exposed not just my weakness, but the quiet places where I trusted myself more than God.

My pain sharpened my prayer life. My disappointments dismantled pride. My losses purified my dependence. Instead of breaking me, God used this season to refine me. Through His Word, God opened my eyes to Scripture in ways I had never experienced before. Passages I had read countless times suddenly came alive with clarity, conviction, and personal application. “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:10).

I tell you the truth, what I've experienced this year is that there are depths in God’s Word that cannot be reached through intellect alone. This years' experience reminded me that revelation flows from intimacy, not education. Even my degree could not explain what the Spirit revealed in moments of surrender.

The Cost of Following Christ

One of the most painful realities of this journey has been relational loss. I have fewer friends today. Some family relationships have grown strained or distant. This loss is not something I celebrate, but it is something I now understand. Jesus never romanticized discipleship. He spoke plainly about its cost: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” (Luke 9:23).

True discipleship requires daily surrender. It means choosing obedience over approval and faithfulness over familiarity. Not everyone is willing or able to walk that road with you.

This separation is not always rooted in hostility; often it is rooted in discomfort. A life surrendered to Christ exposes compromise and challenges complacency. And yes, this obedience reaches into every area of life, including work and home. Faith is not confined to Sunday worship; it governs Monday decisions. See my article on One Spirit, One Life, on this very subject. When Christ becomes your everything, everything else finds its proper place or quietly falls away.

Christ Alone Became My Source

This year forced me to confront a defining truth: nothing truly matters anymore but Him.

Not reputation. Not position. Not human validation. When everything else began to fade, Christ remained. “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped.” (Psalm 28:7).

He became my strength when my own failed. My refuge when circumstances felt unsafe. My anchor when uncertainty tried to pull me under. The Scripture reminds us that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1). My reliance on the world diminished. My dependence on people decreased. But my trust in Christ, and in His Word, grew stronger than ever. Like Job, stripped of comfort yet anchored in faith, I can say: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” (Job 13:15).

This Was My Story 2025

This was my 2025. Not easy, but eternally meaningful. Not comfortable, but deeply transformative. Not what I planned, but exactly what God used. I now understand that God often removes what we rely on so that we learn to rely fully on Him. He does His deepest work not in seasons of abundance, but in seasons of surrender.

Let me encourage you that if you are walking through a year that feels heavy, isolating, or refining, take heart, God is closer than you think. God does not waste pain. He uses it to prepare us for greater faith, deeper trust, and clearer vision. Stay faithful. Stay rooted in His Word. Stay surrendered to His will. Because through it all, God remains faithful.