Trusting God When Life Stinks!

How can we experience joy that lasts, when...
I’m feeling the affects of a financial crisis?
I’m unemployed?

I’m dealing with a bad marriage?
I’ve just lost my spouse to death?

I feel so lonely?
I’m rejected?
I feel God isn’t listening to me?

Joy and happiness are not the same.  Happiness seems to depend on our external circumstances. If our circumstances are pleasant, our needs are being met, and we have the approval of family and friends, we generally feel happy with our lives.

Joy, however, is a Spirit-fruit quality that sustains us when the storms of life are raging.  It is a quality that believers can experience because of the working of the indwelled Spirit in our lives.  It is true, however, that joy can be zapped by our lack of trust in God, sin in our lives, horrific experiences, hardships or an undisciplined life. They way joy can be enhanced is to keep our trust in God and know that God knows what He is supposed to do and how to do it.

John 14:1-4, Jesus said, "Trust in God...." I believe that trust is earned. It takes time to trust.  It is over time and as we getting to know a person that a relationship of trust is being built. I’ve talked to many people who have asked me,   “How can I trust God when life is hard? When I’ve been abused? Raped? Abandoned? “  Doesn’t God care about me?”

Mostly, my response is:  God doesn't do bad things to people; people do bad things to people. Joy comes when we put our focus on a solution, rather than find someone to blame.  God isn’t in the business of making our lives miserable, rather he is rooting us on to see him as one who deeply cares and loves each of his children.  He is sad when one of his kids hurt another one.  He hurts deeply when we hurt.  He gets angry when lives are taken because of the selfish behavior of others.  God does not always stop the brutality of his children.  But he always has a solution to help each of us through the difficult and painful hardships. 

After hundreds of years in brutal oppression, slavery and hard labor, God heard the cries of the Israelites and freed them from a dictatorial regime.

It wasn't an overnight sensation of joy and trust that the Israelites developed with God; it was forty years of traveling, listening, and seeing that God can be trusted. After all, these people had been abused and neglected. No one can just turn off the switch and become joyful and trusting; it takes time. For the Israelites, they eventually trusted God and began to feel that God was in their corner.

The same is true for each of us.  When abuse has taken its toll.  When rejection has been so hurtful.  When a crisis overtakes our lives and no light at the end of the tunnel, it is hard to just turn everything over to someone whom we may not know very well or at all.  It is a journey to get to know them.    

God has many resources to sustain us, help us and lead us to a better place.  It is a willingness to travel the journey to find the inner joy we so desperately want.    Trusting God when life is at its worse.  It is trusting that God is our peace (Judges 6:4) and that he supplies all of our needs, when we need them (Genesis 17:1) and it's trusting that God will provide a way for a better day or medicines for illnesses or food when we are hungry (Genesis 22:14), it is trusting that God will lead us like a shepherd who cares deeply for us (Psalm 23:1) and it is trusting God to be our master when all of chaos is breaking out and the pain is so severe and the hurt is so deep.  The Master will make it better in the end. (Genesis 18:3)  Trust God even when life stinks! 

Remember, Be God Controlled!

Brian

The Mark of a Great Dad!

He isn’t your ordinary father.  He has always been around to lead and teach and to discipline and to protect and to love and to pass on values that will sustain each of his children through life.  His work ethic is extraordinary.  His devotion to his wife no matter the hardships has been inspiring and his desire to lead a godly life is evident in his speech and actions. 

On July 4, 1939, Lou Gehrig declared himself the “luckiest man on the face of the earth” to have played for the Yankee’s.  Today, I declare myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth to have been blessed with a father who helped shape me into the man I am today. 

My father was born on March 1^st 1938 in the little town of Walnut Ridge, Arkansas.  His surroundings were farms of cotton, corn, beans and cattle.  The Black River provided a place of recreation and the one room school was his formal education.  His childhood wasn’t filled with all the gadgets we have today, rather it was filled with work and taking care of things around the farm in which he grew up on. 

My siblings and I have had the opportunity many times as children to visit my dad’s childhood places.  Some of us were taught how to swim in the Black River by my dad and we pretended we were the teachers at the one room school that had become over time a dilapidated building.   We walked the dirt streets where my dad once played and ran through the fields where he once worked. 

The older I get, the more I realize the impact my father has made on me.  The values, morals, ethics, integrity didn’t come by chance; rather, they came from a man who has been immersed in a relationship with God for decades.  As I write this, my eyes are filled with tears of joy because I would not be the man I am today without the father God has given me.  He is godly.  He is gentle.  He is patient.  He is loving.  He is respectful.  He is loyal.  He is a servant. 

The Gospel of Luke describes a story of a son who wanted his inheritance before his dad died so that he could experience the world.  The father granted the inheritance and the son left to sow his wild oats.  The story goes on to say that the son spent all the money and wanted to go home.  The father saw the son from a distance and had compassion on him, ran to him, threw his arms around him and kissed him.  The father was thrilled his son was home and they had a big party of eating, music and dancing.  You see; the father was more in love with his son than he was with his farm.  He was overjoyed that his son was now safe at home.

I’ve seen my dad do the same for one of his sons.  Day in and day out he would wonder where one of his children was.  One night he gets a call.  “Hi dad, this is Keith…can I come home….” The next morning my dad takes off and drives hundreds of miles to bring his lost son home.  My father has helped all six of his children to success in life.  Whether it was financial help, comfort in times of struggle or spiritual advice, he has been there through the thick and the thin. 

For 30 plus years an alarm clock would wake him up at four in the morning to start his day at General Motors in St. Louis, MO.  For 50 years of my life, I have witnessed a man who has admired Jesus so much that he can’t help but tell others about him.  My father has taught hundreds and hundreds about Jesus; mostly though, he taught all six of his children the importance of godly living and faithfulness to Jesus. 

The mark of a great father isn’t in how much he can purchase for their children, rather the mark of a great father is teaching and loving and disciplining and walking the second and third and fourth and fifth miles with each one. 

I am blessed to have a great father.  I love you with all my heart, DAD!

Brian