We can experience joy in difficult circumstances only if our lives are rooted in a relationship with God as a loving Father. Only God's love can give us true and perfect joy. If we are deeply convinced that God cares for us as His beloved children, we will not be confused or discouraged, even in the midst of hardship. https://t.co/duKCEN0LpU
One cannot love God without extending one’s love to the poor. Love for our neighbor is tangible proof of the authenticity of our love for God. The Lord himself teaches us: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). #DilexiTe
In the over two-thousand-year history of the church, the accuracy of end-times predictions has been exactly 0 percent. Here's the lesson: there is a danger in setting a date for the end of the world.
-After Dispensationalism: Reading the Bible for the End of the World
This morning in my intercessory time, I prayed with tears for all who weep, all who suffer pain, all who feel despair. I prayed for the hopeless. All those who feel unloved, who rarely have a kind or affectionate word said to them. I asked that Jesus would interrupt this dark season of yours—one you’ve come to think of as definitive of your whole life—with unavoidable light. Healing light. Cleansing light. The light of himself. The Light of the world.
I know the darkness of despair. Boy, do I know what it is like to feel that circumstances will never change and the pain and instability will never end. I am well acquainted with the question, how long, O Lord?
I pray all the things for you. I pray your circumstances will change. That God will bring love into your life in a multitude of ways and carry you away from that howling wilderness, a prisoner of a hope so ridiculously foreign to you, you cannot stop testifying about it. I pray all of those things!
But most of all I pray you Jesus. Because, this side of the veil, troubles will inevitably come. Temptations to return to despair. Pain that we will be tempted to think once more may never end. But Jesus stays. He sustains. He strengthens. He loosens up the laughter burrowed deep in our chests beneath all our worries. Holds our burdens so we can breathe. Play even. Reminds us he is God and we need not try to do his job.
And over and over and over and over and over and over again, he reminds us that no matter who does not love us, who does not see us, who does not care about us, he, the King of the Universe, DOES.
He is the one who daily meets us in our challenges. He is the Sun that rises before daybreak in our morning and in our mourning. And there is healing in his wings.
I pray you Jesus today.