When everything seems to be against you

The hardest part of the calling is answering it every day

It is Tuesday morning, November 25th, 2025, as I suddenly think of a testimony shared by Dr. Raoul Wafo: how God acted in his favor when he was falsely accused in business.
As I reflected on these events, I paused for a long time on this remarkable fact: true to himself, throughout that entire season, the Man of God continued to lead the church services and fulfill his mandate — both ministerial and professional — right in the midst of an indescribable storm that very few people even knew about.
That’s when one of his statements came back to mind:

“The calling is sacred, the calling is high!” — Dr. Raoul Wafo

From my humble observations and my limited experience, I am inclined to say that a time of crisis generally includes three stages:

•  Stage 1: We are in a state of confusion. Why is this happening to me? This is so unfair
• Stage 2: We try to hold on to something or someone — a kind of safety net
• Stage 3: We surrender completely to God, either through awareness or because the things/people we were clinging to end up disappointing us.

These three phases are fully human, no matter one’s level of spiritual maturity, simply because we remain human beings.

Let’s take a deeper look at each stage.

• In the first stage, we wonder why this is happening to us. We feel it is unfair, undeserved. We even tell ourselves that we did everything we could to avoid such a situation, so how could this be happening? Many emotions then surface: anger, resentment, self-condemnation, guilt, and many others…
• In the second stage, we try at all costs to find a solution to escape the situation as quickly as possible. So we build a strategy to solve it by our own means or we turn to a “backup plan” or a person we believe can help us.
• In the third stage—which, I must emphasize, is not automatic—we surrender completely to God, either voluntarily or by default.

Over time, through my humble observations, I have noticed that some people who operate at a high level of faith have developed the ability to combine stages 2 and 3. Let me explain: although they naturally want to solve the problem themselves, as any human would, they surrender to God almost instantly, leaving almost no transitional gap between stage 2 and stage 3.

Sometimes we want so badly to fix our problems ourselves that we remain stuck at stage 2, stubbornly.

However, I also noticed something truly troubling—or at least troubling to me.

Even though we must surrender completely and willingly to God in stage 3, another key question remains: discernment.

• When should we stop acting?
• How should we stop?
• At what point should we stop?
• How do we know we have done everything that was in our power?

This is where the real trap lies: there are two extremes. On one hand, the temptation to do nothing and abandon everything to God; on the other, the temptation to do too much, simply because we do not know where to stop in the process. Yet we must not forget a fundamental premise: from birth, we are judged based on our performance and on our personal, intuitu personae, ability to succeed or fail — society acting as a relentless judge and mirror.

This, in my view, is the core issue that affects us all, regardless of age or background.

I must admit, I do not have the answer to this question yet. I hope to obtain it in the days to come, by the grace of God. But until then, let us meditate on it, for any one of us may receive the much-needed answer.

For all these reasons, I believe the hardest part of the calling is answering it every day — continuing to work daily on one’s life mission, whether it rains or snows, regardless of our moods, our emotions, or the circumstances we go through.
As Dr. Raoul Wafo said: “The calling is sacred, the calling is high.” Therefore, fulfilling it cannot depend on how we feel at any given moment.

We are in this together… and above all, God is with us.
Let us stay strong.

SBE