Posts Tagged "hope"

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” -1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 It’s hard to rejoice in the midst of grief.  It’s hard to give thanks when you’ve just said goodbye to the one you love, and the pain digs deep in your heart.  What kind of God would be so calloused as to demand rejoicing in a time of death, thanks in a time of loss? Not my God.  My God doesn’t demand thanks FOR all circumstances, but invites thanks and rejoicing IN all circumstances, things that come when we face our grief head-on and embrace it, but let His Spirit lift our eyes up beyond this moment to the light of eternity… We did not “lose Joy”.  She is not gone, not dead, not...

Could it be that it is God Himself who brings about the “winter of our discontent”, the collapse of our joy in the work of our hands? Is it possible that sometimes He must do this, so as to wrench us away from our myopic concentration on our own perceived ability to please Him?  Perhaps it is God, trying actively to change us, as if He were behind the curtain of our life-stage, working to throw off our lines and upset our performance.  Perhaps He must do this because He knows that as long as our happiness remains rooted in our own accomplishments, instead of in a single-focused acceptance of His acceptance of us as poor servants, we will never truly be free to find and know either our greatest joy, or our fullest service. Perhaps it is not so much a test of...

“…unless you forgive your brother from your heart…” – Matt. 18:35b It’s easy to reflexively think of forgiveness as a sort of one-shot deal, where you say some magic words and everything is fixed and fine. But what about those times when you say the words, but your heart keeps churning afterwards?  Does that mean you didn’t really forgive from the heart? Maybe it’s not as simple as that. If forgiveness was just some set of magic words that fixed everything at once, then would that even be worth anything?  To me, “from the heart” implies there is a degree of work involved, and that I must choose to be forgiving of the other person, not just flip some emotional switch.  After all, different offenses cause...

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” -Psalm 130:5-6 (ESV) I walked in to the sanctuary of the large Korean Assemblies of God church and I could feel it in an instant. Thick in the air among the gathered people was a feeling of anticipation, of excitement, of knowing that GOD would show up that morning. This was not my first time to visit Promise Church in Flushing, NY, and because I had been there before, I had not just a hope, not just a desire, but an expectation that something special would happen that morning. I started to think though, “I’ve been here before but many of these others haven’t. They’ve not heard the choir sing...

“O my Strength, I watch for You.” – Psalm 59:9a Do I watch for the Lord?  There is so much said about “waiting” on the God, but sometimes it’s so easy for me to say I’m “waiting on the Lord”, when in reality I’m just sitting on my hands doing nothing, either expecting Him to just show up at some point, or maybe not expecting anything at all.  In fact, I think sometimes what I call “waiting on God”… is really just ignoring Him while I do my own thing. But do I ever watch for God?  I read this passage in Psalms and the first thing I think of is sitting at my dining room window, staring out the half-drawn blinds at the empty road outside our house, not just waiting for a special someone to get here, but gazing, straining my...