One of my friends and co-workers at the Jesus alliance is experiencing exceedingly difficult and heart breaking trials. He received terrible news on one front only to be followed by horrible news on another. His name is Tim and I ask you to please stop for a moment and pray for him and his family as they fight their way through today and the difficult days ahead.
Tim had been fasting for two weeks and praying for the Jesus Alliance to be successful in its fundraising efforts, so he was weakened and physically run down when it began. Satan seems to launch his attacks on us when we are weakened and vulnerable. He did the same with Jesus when He was preparing to launch His ministry and was fasting in the desert.
Jesus rebuked Him by quoting Scripture after Scripture. Interesting that God Himself used His own Holy Bible to rebuke and vanquish him, we should do the same. I wrote my friend and reminded him of what Paul said about trials and tribulations. 2 Cor. 4:17 – For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! Paul knew trials and persecution. Also the Apostle Peter who also suffered weighed in 1 Peter 1:5-6 – and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you, who through faith are protected by God’s power for the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer various trials . . .
In times of great sorrow and stress we just need to focus on Jesus and draw close to Him. My mother suddenly and tragically died when I was just thirty years old and but a baby Christian. That was followed just a short time later by the suicide of my only sibling, my brother Jim. It remains as the most severe anguish I’ve ever experienced and seemed at the time to be unbearable. The hole it left in my heart remains to this very day.
I got through it by drawing close to my Savior, reading His word, and intense prayer whereby I begged for mercy. Though it did not bring my loved ones back and the hole was not repaired, it was filled with the love that can only come from the Holy Spirit, otherwise known as the Comforter, and I learned to live with it. The demonic oppression that surrounded me and encouraged me to throw in the towel and blame God for the evil that he himself had wrought was combated and defeated through reading the Bible, prayer, and clinging to Jesus.
Someone told me the other day that I was an eternity thinker. They are oh so right. This life is short (79.9 years on average), but eternity is forever. I daily look to the glorious days ahead and not the problems of the “vaporesque” day and age in which we live. I focus on Jesus who will deliver me from all tears, sickness, tragedy, sorrow, grieving, pain, and hate forever and ever. He is the Alpha and Omega and I love him with all my heart for saving me from my sins and for loving me in spite of my wretchedness. Amen!
Romans 8:39
No power in the sky above or in the earth below – indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
May 12, 2016 – Click here to listen