I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word.–Psalm 119:16   Dr. Howard Hendricks said,”The greatest problem in the church today is that we have an increasing number of Christians who are under the Word of God but not in it for themselves. Being under the Word of God should be a stimulus–not a substitute–for getting into it for yourself.”   I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Hendricks. Churches are full of people who have never learned to feed themselves spiritually and, I don’t care how good the preacher is, you never get as much nourishment as you need just attending church–even if you attend every service. Studying the Bible daily is not just something preachers and teachers should do, every Christian should be a student of God’s Word.   I can remember as a young Christian getting together with others in the church (we did that a lot back then) and talking about what we each had been studying. I never hear of people doing that today. When folks today do get together they usually talk about everything under the sun, except the Bible. If you are not a student of the Bible you have no idea what a great blessing you are missing. It is not only a blessing, it is a benefit is immense importance. It is impossible to be a healthy, strong, effective Christian without a regular diet of God’s Word. As a starter why not read Psalm 119 everyday for a week. You will be amazed! Give it a try.(O yeah–I mean the whole chapter each day).

We cannot avoid adversity, but we can conquor our cares. Since God’s fobids us to worry He must provide a means whereby we can do as He commands. That provision is Himself. He doesn’t just show us a solution–He is the solution. God is glorious and fixing your focus on Him is the key to bearing up under the burdens of life. Jesus wasn’t lying when He said “without me ye can do nothing”, nor was Paul being untruthful when he said,” I can do all things through Christ”. But to do it we must ever be looking to Him——– His Word is wonderful    His promises are precious       His grace is glorious          His mercy is marvellous             His love is lavish                His patience is plenteous                   His faithfulness is fabulous                      His power is profound                         His blessings are bountiful                            His plan is perfect We sing “How Great Thou Art”, but after we’ve said all that we can say the half has not been told. He is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. We simply cannot describe God–He is altogether lovely!   However, we can fix our focus on Him, and doing so changes our perspective on everything. Although our circumstances are the same we aren’t. We are changed! As Paul said, “But we all, with open faces beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”( 2 Cor. 3:18)   Regardless of what you are forced to face today, if you fix your focus on Christ you can be victorius, ie., faithful to God. We cannot meditate upon Him without being changed. So, instead of feeling sorry for yourself, think about Him and you will come away saying, “O for a thousand tongues to sing my Redeemers praise.” Now you’ve got the emphasis where it ought to be!

–who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord? –Deut. 4:11

 

“How can a God of love, who has everything in His control, let such a thing happen to me?” So asked a young woman who had received severe injuries through a fall from a horse. “Crippled for life,” she overheard the doctor say.

The pastor was silent for a moment. “Did you suffer much pain when they put you in the cast?”

“The pain was terrible,” she replied.

“Where was your father then?”

“He stood right by me,” she replied.

“Did your father allow the doctor to hurt you that way?”

“Yes, but that was necessary.”

“Did your father allow the doctor to hurt you even though he loved you, or because he loved you?”

“You mean to suggest that because God loves me, He also allowed

me to be hurt?”

The pastor answered with a nod. ” ‘This thing is from Me.’ Let these five words comfort you. They will furnish a silver lining to the cloud. Yours is not a case of ‘hard luck.’ This trial was planned by God.”

If you are His child, He is preparing you for better service. Shakespeare said: “In sickness, let me not so much say, ‘Am I getting better of my pain; but am I getting better for it.’ “

Let us not say, “When will I be getting out of this?” but, “What will I be getting out of this?” He will draw you closer to Him through this trial. –copied

As hard as we might try, we can’t always understand one another. As we listen to people pour out the burdens of their heart, we’re often guilty of saying,”I understand” when we don’t. O we mean well, we want to understand and we try, but we can’t. We are all different and our circumstances are not the same.   Sometimes we are guilty of criticizing others when we would actual do worse were we in their exact same situation. They fare better than we would were the roles reversed, yet we complain about their short-comings. We need to realize that we can’t always understand the degree of their temptation, the weight of their burden, the extent of their weakness, and the effects of their past. If we could truly understand we might commend them rather than condemn them.   In a thousand years I could not explain to you what it is like to be a pastor. Unless you are a pastor, you don’t have a clue! However, neither can I always understand what it is like being in your shoes. Since that is true, we both need to work at being more understanding regarding things that we don’t understand. Although we can’t understand we can be more understanding, and that would make a tremendous difference in our relationships.   We are all different, imperfect, and in need of help. Let’s pray for one another, and for ourselves—asking God to help us understand that we don’t understand. Since we all fail, it behooves us to be “kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”(Ephesians 4:32). That’s not just good advice, it is a command.

One day a boy and his father went into the mountains. They took shelter from a storm in the lee of some great gray boulders that lay like sleeping giants close to the crest of a lonely ridge. As the two looked upward, they saw the wind lay its grim hands on a mountain pine that towered from the summit of the ridge. It was a sentinel that could escape no danger, an outpost to receive the first shock of the enemy’s attack. Savagely the wind tore at it, shook it violently, and howled through the branches.

To the boy, the tree, strong though it was, seemed about to be torn to pieces. “Look, Father!” he said, pining upward, “what the wind is doing to that pine!” The full fury of the blast just then made the pine shudder and sway. It heaved desperately against the black sky.

“Storms are an old story to that tree,” said the father. “A tree like that lives in a struggle from the time it is high enough to catch the first breath of air. Tennyson says a tree is ‘storm-strengthened on a windy site.’ The strongest trees are always those that have weathered the greatest number of gales. Besides, the question is not what is happening to the tree, but what is happening in the tree.”

“The pine does not really seem to mind fighting the storm, does it?” the boy asked.

“No, because it is able to withstand the strongest wind,” the father answered. “It is the same with us. It really does not matter what happens to us, but it matters a great deal what happens in us.” (copied)

There are a great many folks who need to stop resisting and resenting the storms. Instead they need to bend with the wind and let God do His work within!