When life is not going well for us, we tend to feel unloved by God. Lose a job. Get sick or endure a disease. Suffer through a hard relationship. Live in loneliness.  When those things happen, it is not too hard for us to wonder, “God, do you really love me?” Yet, according to the Bible, life circumstances are not the primary way in which God communicates his love to us. Malachi 1:1-5 describes four truths about his love.

Life doesn’t always go as planned. We put our faith in Christ. We pray for God’s will. We do our best to follow him. And things don’t work out like we think they would or the way we think they should. That happens with our health, our career, our relationships, and more. Malachi 1:6-14 has three instructions from God that we need to hear when life is not going as planned.

It is common for new Christians to an initial burst of zeal and feel amazingly close to God, but the Christian life overall is filled with ups and downs. Sometimes our heart is just not full of passion like it was in the beginning. Sometimes it’s just regular life. Or sometimes we hit a spiritual desert, a winter experience, a time when God seems distant. Malachi 2:1-9 identifies the three root causes of spiritual decline as well as three actions we can take to revive our hearts for God.

We have all felt let down by God in one way or another. You wanted that relationship to work out, but it ended. You thought you were getting the promotion, but the job isn’t going well. You were counting on God to heal, but he didn’t. You had a dream, but some of your life feels a bit more like nightmare. God doesn’t always do what we want or what we think he should do. Malachi 2:10-16 contains five instructions for us when we are disappointed with the Lord.

At times, the world seems very unfair, doesn’t it? You put your faith in Jesus and do your best to follow him, but all is not well in your life. You look around and see people who don’t follow Christ are getting ahead. Their life seems far better than yours all the while they are acting quite un-Christian! Malachi 2:17-3:5 provides five actions that will help us through life when it seems unfair.

What do you do when God is telling you to do something that seems too hard to do? What do you do when the Lord is commanding us to obey in a way that feels really difficult? The good news is that you don’t have to simply give up or give in. Jesus helps his people through our struggles to trust him. Malachi 3:6-15 contains four steps we can take to grow in our faith.

It is common in the Christian experience to discover that God is displeased with something in your life. What do you do when you come to the realization that you have done wrong? How should you respond to the Lord when he clearly communicates to you about a specific sin. Malachi 3:16-4:6 has four responses that will enable us to change course and please God.