Archive for God's Help
Finding Faith to Go On
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When you find yourself with your hopes and dreams lying in a million pieces around your feet, can you find the faith to go on? I found myself in that place about three and a half years ago. Every time I reference the story, I count the years, months, and days since the dam broke and my life was flooded with the violent waters of trouble. There seems to be some kind of solace in making that time further and further away from today. But in another way, my life will always be referenced from that point.
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How Can You Keep On Keeping On When Life is Difficult?
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John Eldredge captured the feeling we all have at times when he said that sometimes life feels like a long, brutal assault against one’s heart. Try as we might to explain it away, perhaps the best summary is that life is not what God originally intended. The Fall of Man continues to have rippling effects on all of humanity, and we find ourselves in a less than perfect world with less than perfect people, including ourselves!
The present result of living in a fallen world is often pain, discouragement, and difficulty. We know that God has come to us, offering redemption in our daily lives through Christ and setting in place the ultimate redemption of all when Christ returns. Yet in the meantime, we often find ourselves hurt and misunderstood and having hurt others.
How can we care for others and our own hearts in the midst of pain and suffering?
Jesus gave keys to his disciples in John 14 as he prepared their hearts for the difficult days ahead.
“Don’t let your hearts be troubled.” You have a part in guarding your own heart from discouragement. Note that I didn’t say you could necessarily guard your heart from difficulty. Jesus was not offering an exemption from the difficult days which lay ahead of the disciples; he was offering an anchor for the storm.
Proverbs 4:23 tells us to guard our heart above all else because from it, all of our life flows.
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With God in the Valley
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Recently I’ve been pondering how God leads me, at times, into the valley of the shadow of death, where life is uncertain, the terrain is difficult, and it’s just downright scary at times.
Well, you might say, “God doesn’t do that.” Uh, I beg to differ. The Psalmist David, the one God Himself said was a “man after my own heart”, invited us to explore the reality of walking in that valley. Job, who was called “a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil”, certainly walked through the valley. Jesus Himself was “driven into the wilderness” to be tempted, and on the cross he faced the greatest darkness, as he took my sin and your sin and the sin of all humanity on himself and cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The mysteries of human suffering are beyond our grasp, and yet God invites us into them. While I do not believe that God causes evil and I understand that all evil and pain in the world are a result of the work of the enemy, I do believe that God uses human suffering to change us.
In the valley, we struggle and grasp for answers. We wish we could explain the workings of God and the workings of evil in neat theological boxes and all the while God is whispering to us that it’s not so much understanding that we need but a releasing of our need to understand.
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What Can God Do About Our Pain and Disappointment?
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Most of us are more than qualified to write a good country song or two. You know, something like,
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8 Important Things to Know During Hard Times
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We all live in a world cursed because of sin. Part of the effect of that curse is hard times, difficulty, pain, and sorrow. I so wish I could tell you that Christians don’t have to go through any difficulties, but the Word of God contains story after story of believers in difficult times. Paul and Peter in prison, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, Stephen being stoned, believers being persecuted, the very life of Jesus, and I could go on and on. And this list applies to all storms whether we caused them, Satan sent them, or God designed them. In a moment, I am going to share my list of eight things you should know about hard times but before I do that I need to give you some foundation.
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