Christians going through hardship – groenintheword.blog

I Am a Christian and Was Incarcerated, Part 2

By Lisa Groen

I believe if God sees fit to take someone to jail, God is faithful to put the kind of faith in them to match the level of hardship he takes them through!

Perhaps from the sheer boredom and praying that I would learn whatever the Lord wanted to teach me I took on the posture of teachableness. The Bible became very meaningful to me in fresh ways and Jesus became more real to me and showed himself to be my most reliable and trustworthy friend. We get so distracted by the stimuli in the world, and when you have those things stripped away, it’s interesting how your ears get opened and your heart can grow soft to God’s leading. I found a Bible right away and kept my nose in it day after day. I would pray about the stresses of jail, and sought God as to why He let the circumstances happen that led me into jail. I sought God in jail and let Him know I didn’t want be a hard hearted person which is a common stereotype people on the outside of jail have of people on the inside.

I prayed about many things in jail on a personal level because you have time to do a lot of self-reflection. You realize you need encouragement, but many family and friends I had for years never wrote me back after I would write them a 6- or 7-page letter. At the time I wondered why people can’t write back a sentence or two after you pour your heart out to them. I realized to become resentful about that would be not fitting because prisoners by definition have few rights. I found it was best to focus on the people who wanted to be in my life.

As far as jail goes harassment is common. A lot of it is based on power struggles and on who thinks they can dominate. Some of the women in my pod wanted me to get kicked out of the low security part and put in lock down. I was told about 5 of the women who happened to be black misinterpreted something that I said and they thought I was racist. They were saying I was the whitest one in the jail because they used hood language and I didn’t know what they were saying some of the time because I am not from the hood. So, I tried to fit in by dancing like some of them. They thought I was making fun of them by my lousy dance so a few days later one of my friends who was friends with them warned me about the 5 women. It just happened to be a woman who I shared part of my testimony of Jesus with.

The women who wanted me to get kicked out of low security kept doing things like putting their shampoo in my shower stall when I would go to wash my socks and underwear. They wanted me to close the door to the shower stall so they could accuse me of stealing their shampoo, but the Lord directed me as to what was going on, and I kept the shower stall open and nothing happened because the video cameras were just outside the shower stalls recording everything.

Kindness always goes a long way as a Christian in or out of jail, but you have to know who you’re dealing with. Sometimes hardships can pop up when you’re going out of your way to be a generous person. One woman told another right in front of me I was her B- – – – because I was nice and would share snacks and other things I would buy from the commissary. So even though I was trying to be nice, some of them thought I was trying too hard to win friends so they began to “use me” to get free snacks and other things. One girl tried to pretend to be sick to see if I would give her free cough drops without asking for anything in return. It was obvious to me she was not sick but only pretending. I told her she didn’t look or sound sick and did not give her any cough drops. I hate being lied to.

Other conflicts that arose from a power trip happened such as one of the women waved her arms around my head and leaned over me and said something like “whhhhooosh!” so I ducked out of the way and I had to lean over the balcony on the second floor in order to keep from being hit in the head by her. I told the guard about her because I had done nothing rude to her. One of my cell mates would get off her bunk really quick and she kicked me in the head as I sat on the side of my bed. When she did it a second time I told her to quit doing that and she flipped out on me and said I was crazy. She then was yelling at the top of her lungs at me about all kinds of things and fabricating lies about things she said I did wrong but I did none of those things. I thought “there is going to be no peace in my cell because she has flown off the deep end and she didn’t seem to want to be reeled in” by anything I said. I complained to the guard about her wild imagination and her unpredictableness and her verbally and physically aggressive ways for no reason and asked for a different cell. They ended up moving her out of my cell across the pod to a different cell.

I did not realize how quickly a person becomes unpopular when you tell the guards about another prisoner not treating you right. I had no experience in jail before this. That’s when she and several other women wanted to believe I made up lies about her so they began to treat me with dirty looks, suspicion, hostility, and loud rude comments and dozens of acts of mockery. At times it felt like I had a lot of enemies in jail, and little support from outside of jail or from many people I had known a really long time. Jesus helped me make the friends I needed to have in jail, and he protected me from the people I did not need as friends and their schemes. One day God gave me the scripture Isaiah 41:12 which says “Though you search for your enemies, you will not find them. Those who wage war against you will be as nothing at all.” I knew God was promising my jail experience was going to get better. The Lord also gave me hope that I wasn’t going to get beat up by the 5 women when he showed me Proverbs 6:16-19 “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, 18 a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, 19 a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.”

God was taking the time to show me he hated their behavior. Because they were devising schemes to make me look like a thief, and were lying about me to the guards, because they had a plan to rush into evil by harassing me daily, and because they were stirring up conflict in the community by constantly mocking me and changing position in line whenever we would stand in line for meds, so they could be right behind me or in front of me to harass and intimidate me, criticize me loudly and trying to humiliate me. In the middle of that, God gave me the assurance that he was going to protect me from their evil plans, conflict, harassment, and pointless mockery, because He showed me those scriptures. I knew some relief was on the way! It was just a matter of His timing!

Because my friend informed me, I knew what to pray for. I used the promises God gave me to pray. As I waited on God to answer, I was harassed by those 5 women for weeks until one of the guards made everyone get out of their cells and come down to the main floor and yelled at everyone and said he wanted the disrespect to stop and then pointed at me and yelled at everyone for their behavior for a few minutes basically saying they need to stop harassing people, and he pointed at me to show them who to stop harassing. One of the main women who harassed me day after day and brushed against me with her giant body calling me the B word decided to be nice to me after a while. (She was about 6 feet tall and weighed about 320 pounds, and I am 5’4”). Others became nice to me when they saw I was a good volleyball player. God prevented them from getting me set up to look guilty when one of them threw a lit match in my cell when the guards were passing out mail and when they got to my cell and smelled the smoke from the match I didn’t get in trouble for it and God prevented me from going into lock down high security.

I knew God wanted me to do something positive other than just trying to “hide” my life in Jesus. I remembered Jesus said he has made us the light of the world, (In Matthew 5:14, Jesus says, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.”) I knew we should not hide our lights, and that meant I was going to need to keep praying and ask God to help me overlook people’s abuse and nastiness and the mental strength to be kind to them and not look at their wrongs. God never left me but He let me go through hardships while He drew me close in jail when all that negative stuff was happening. I found some of the hearts of the women changed and God gave me what I needed in the midst of a difficult 75 days as long as I was praying about being a positive influence and not hiding my light under a bushel.

Lessons learned:

Pray that God would help you be teachable. God will provide faith to match the level of difficulty of the situation.

Don’t become miffed at people who don’t reach out to you after you reach out to them. Focus on the people who want to be in your life.

People in jail can be hypersensitive. Don’t try too hard to fit in, because people can misinterpret your behavior.

If you get harassed, I believe God cares about this, and God still wants his justice to unfold on behalf of those who trust in Him and seek Him for help behind bars.

Pray about everything. Break out of your shell even if people treat you roughly in jail and take time to be kind to people. Don’t take your relationships for granted even if you just met them because God has a purpose even for the difficult relationships, and they may need the light of Jesus from your faith to shine on them and that can only happen when your heart is right toward them. If God sees fit to put you in jail, let Isaiah 9:2 become a reality for others. When they see your faith is real, and if they can get a needed glimpse of Jesus, and if they are drawn to God, we will be able to tell the testimony “The people which sat in darkness saw a great light.” LG

Is It Our Weakness, Or God’s Opportunity?

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

Jeremiah 9:23-25 “‘This is what the Lord says: The wise person should not boast in his wisdom; the strong should not boast in his strength; the wealthy should not boast in his wealth. 24 But the one who boasts should boast in this: that he understands and knows me—that I am the Lord, showing faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things. This is the Lord’s declaration. 25 “‘Look, the days are coming—this is the Lord’s declaration—when I will punish all the circumcised yet uncircumcised:

So having a circumcised heart goes right along with knowing the Lord who delights in faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth. The Lord shows that he overrides a person’s strength, money, and wisdom to put them level on the same playing field as the man or woman without these things that still knows the Lord. It is a true blessing to be able to come to God without wisdom necessarily, without strength per se, without wealth as a prerequisite, and to receive the benefit this scripture speaks of which is the privilege still of being able to understand and know God, and to be among those who have a circumcised heart.

Isaiah 40:28-29 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary; His understanding is beyond searching out. 29 He gives power to the faint and increases the strength of the weak.

So, the Lord overrides the weak man’s weakness and faintness, and he blesses them with strength. It is a true blessing to be able to come to God being on the verge of fainting, and to receive the benefits this scripture speaks of which is the privilege still of having your power and strength to be increased.

Romans 9:16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

What else could it be but the mercy of God to override our lack of will and lack of taking action and grant us something good we don’t deserve? It is a true blessing to be able to come to God being on the verge of not having your own will set for action, and without your body set for performance and this scripture speaks of the privilege still of being a candidate for God’s mercy.

2 Chronicles 20:12 O our God, will You not judge them? For we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You.”

So, Jehoshaphat had faith that God could override the power of his enemies and level the playing field and take the powerlessness of his own army, and “work something out on their behalf”

I am not one to promote lack of wisdom, poverty, lack of taking action, weakness, or a lack of battle strategy or to say we don’t need to apply ourselves in our faith-walks. But it is encouraging to know that in all these situations it was clear the messages God is showing us are that when we feel like we have absolutely nothing to give out or draw from out of our personal reserves, we can lean upon our God, and his strength will be made perfect in our weaknesses.

2 Chronicles 20:3-4 Jehoshaphat was afraid and turned his attention to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. ⁴So Judah gathered together to seek help from the Lord; they even came from all the cities of Judah to seek the Lord.

In Jeremiah 9:23-25, Isaiah 40: 28-29, and the Romans 9:16 scriptures, what we see highlighted are the wonderful transcendent virtue attributes of God, based on God’s initiative and willing action on his people’s behalf. But when a little bit of fasting gets involved, then this happens: In 2 Chronicles 20:3-4, Jehoshaphat was afraid and turned his attention to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. ⁴So Judah gathered together to seek help from the Lord; they even came from all the cities of Judah to seek the Lord. Then later in vs. 21-23 When he had consulted with the people, he appointed those who sang to the Lord and those who praised Him in holy attire, as they went out before the army and said, “Give thanks to the Lord, for His lovingkindness is everlasting.” ²²When they began singing and praising, the Lord set ambushes against the sons of Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah; so they were routed. ²³For the sons of Ammon and Moab rose up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir destroying them completely; and when they had finished with the inhabitants of Seir, they helped to destroy one another. 25When Jehoshaphat and his people came to take their spoil, they found much among them, including goods, garments and valuable things which they took for themselves, more than they could carry. And they were three days taking the spoil because there was so much. 30 So the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was at peace, for his God gave him rest on all sides.

When we aim to add fasting, praise and worship, to our seeking God out of our weaknesses, we can expect him to magnify his gracious attributes before us despite our weaknesses, however ugly they may seem to cling to us or cover us, and His glory is shown in spite of what we are not.

Let’s be encouraged in who our Gracious Heavenly Father Is— “the Lord, showing faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things”, He says.

Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, as we meditate upon your Godly attributes which you possess in your reliable self-autonomous self-existence, you shed your grace upon us. How wonderful it is that you are so unchangeable, and your steadfast love and your loving-kind ways are often magnified before our very eyes. Your desire is towards your people Oh God, and you draw us with chords of compassion. May we meditate this week on the countless ways in which your strength is made perfect in our weaknesses, and may those who are led to do so fast, pray, and worship you Lord! For you are worthy above all else and above everyone else, Oh God our Gracious Rock and Redeemer! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Finding the Power to Do Hard Things

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

I have 3 simple truths about the joy of the Lord for us to consider today. It is the knowledge of this joy that can help us to do hard things with a joyful momentum. They are:

We get to rejoice and bring our joys to the Lord because we are chosen by God for serving the Lord, and this is invigorating that our rejoicing blesses him.
We get to receive joy from the Lord even doing hard things as we are serving the Lord
And as we bring our service to the Lord and recognize the grace from God upon our lives to live a changed life by his power, our actions can help serve to feed our joy in the Lord and create a joyful momentum, that seems to “come back to kiss our faces”.

To show these truths I bring us a glimpse of Psalm 119:4-5. These 2 scriptures give us a very simple reason we can rejoice in the Lord steadily even while doing hard things. Let’s read: 119:4-5 “Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, 5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.”

God’s strength and power are surely seen in the stability of the sun and with the immensity of heat and light it carries by radiating day after day almost seemingly without fail. It is something to consider the strength of the sun’s shining and it’s rising at one end of the sky and setting in another as if the sun were “rejoicing as a strong man to run his course”.

God is declaring his glory through the heavens in this Psalm. Although Psalm 119 is about how the glory of the sun is pictured as a strong man, its poetry gives us the feeling that there is a picture we can have about how powerful the knowledge of God’s glory is to propel us forward along with anything else touched by his glory. I can believe as we picture the application of truth from verses 4 and 5 we see that being touched by the glory of the Lord as the sun, can give those touched by God’s glory the expectation and experience of being propelled forward with strength and rejoicing by God’s declaring his glory in our lives.

If a Christian is saved for any length od time, we have recognized we can safely believe that God is consciously in the habit of providing all his children a strength comparable to magnet like adherence to a run a course for God with power and indistinguishable light although the sun is less touched by the glory of God inasmuch as Jesus didn’t die for the sun to be saved; he died for us to be saved. We may not keep to the path perfectly, to which we aree called, but the glory of God’s forgiveness and cleansing touches us, and we are revived and go on rejoicing stronger to run our course with God. God’s gravitational pull on us so to speak is a strong “gravity” or “staying power” he gives to keep us on course with him as a gift to pull us to him and a power to run in the path of his commands. Truly God makes us radiate his truth and love along our path as we rejoice, and he propels us forward with a powerful joy in our course in the Lord.

So, lets recap our 3 truths:

We get to rejoice and bring our joys to the Lord because we are chosen by God for serving the Lord
We get to receive joy from the Lord even doing hard things as we are serving the Lord
And as we bring our service to the Lord and recognize the grace from God upon our lives to live a changed life by his power, our actions can help serve to feed our joy in the Lord.

Prayer: Oh God, may these truths with scriptural meditations serve to give us the joyful momentum to do hard things like fasting before you Oh God, and even long term or regular fasting Oh God. And may it also serve to give us a joyful momentum to do the hard thing of praying continuously before You Lord with gladness and willingness and find power and joy to fulfill our callings, and like a magnet “keep to our course” empowered with the heavenly touch of Your glory. Amen Lord, Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Pains Christians Encounter That Are Unnecessary

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

God definitely has some thoughts about what should be happening on the Earth, at any given time and we can be confident that the One who created the Heavens and the Earth is also running the show. God is in control of what is allowed to happen on the earth. God is Sovereign and has a plan for “making all things new”, for “vengeance is mine, I will repay” He says, and a plan for “healing of the nations”, for “healing the brokenhearted”, for “redeeming people from the curse” that is “found upon the face of the earth”. God has “broken the power of sin” and “put sin to death in the body of Jesus”, and “came to save his people from their sins”. God has promised a future place where there is no strife, where people “will no longer learn war”, where people will be generous, loving, good to their neighbors, serving one another, live long and healthy lives, where people work to “rescue the helpless, and help rebuild broken cities”. God in scripture has gone on record saying that for man to be alone is not a good thing. He hates when His people are isolated from Him and others in the family of God, and he has gone on record saying he hates injustice, immorality, and inequality. God hates it when people in the world are hurt by other people’s sin.

Proverbs 6:16-19 There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

The facts are that sin does hurt people. Even the sin that a person may commit when he is alone may eventually end up surfacing and hurting someone else, as far as something like pornography being viewed, or of a person ruminating over any selfish, prideful, or bitter thoughts. The Bible says God hates those things. Getting hurt is such a common experience that everyone on the face of the earth can unfortunately experience this multiple times a week, if it were not simply getting hurt by the “sin” that we see around us that is described to “vex” one’s soul, as in “Rivers of waters run down mine eyes,
because they keep not thy law” (Ps 119:136). And righteous Lot was vexed, which is to say, greatly distressed with the depraved and sexualized words and conduct of the wicked Sodomites (2 Pet 2:7). One of the qualities that is spoken about of God’s wonderful promises for the future telling that he will one day “make all things new” is a wonderful place to start ruminating over all the hope we can have in a trustworthy God who is aware of our circumstances, our pains, our needs and knows every injustice we have ever suffered, so that meditating on his promises surely can shape our perspectives of what is happening presently all over the globe, shape our understanding of the past and can shape our understanding of what will happen in the future.

1 Corinthians 13:7 says “(Love) always protects….” And “1 John 4:16 says “God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.” Or, “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” So, to see the ways God protects people in scripture and in the world around us is surely a picture of his loving heart. Needless to say, some scholars say at least 5 and possibly 6 out of 10 of the 10 commandments were laws God made to keep us free from the pains of sin, and from hurting one another, and in the OT there are many additional laws God put in place to bring aide to the hurt or defrauded, where the scripture tells in detail how to go about paying restitution.

Therefore praying for protection and/or avoidance of pain can be one of the most prayed-for topics that exists: “God I ask for safety for my patients”…from the lips of a surgeon… “God, please keep my classroom safe today…” from the lips of a school teacher, “God please keep all food bourn illness away from my business…” from the lips of a restaurant owner, or butcher. God please protect this person, we ask for traveling mercies…” from the lips of all who travel, and bus drivers and airplane pilots. “God please keep the campground safe today…” from the lips of state recreation area workers, just to name a few.

But for those who believe in the Sovereignty of God, we can be sometimes taught wrong or tempted to think “everything” that “just happens” is His will, so that means therefore we just simply need to “embrace everything” as coming directly from Him. The idea that we should “be completely humble and not try to fight against anything” so as to be relieved from our duty of imploring God through our belief in the God who protects is an all too deeply accepted half-truth/half-lie that has served to make lame and impotent the Christian church today.

So, here is just a snapshot or short list of “unnecessary pains” the church should not enable by the sin of not thinking it necessary to pray and fast, or enable by the sin of omitting prayer and fasting at times!

Unnecessary Pains:

The pain our sin causes. We need to fight our sin and not accept it, even though our righteousness has been paid for in full not by our works, God has called us to follow him. We should not “shrink back” in our fight of faith. There may be times when we need to “re-coup” and “regain strength” but we should not become passive in our fight against our own sin.
The pain of bad treatment from others. We should not accept all treatment from others as always something needed to keep us in God’s will. God’s people prayed for deliverance from Egypt. Paul was let down by a basket over a wall and was taken to a place where he would be safe from death threats. King David fought many fights against the armies of pagan nations and God gave him and Israel the victory many times over. Esther did not accept the idea of genocide for the people of Israel, and was called on by God to trust Him although her life could be at stake going before the King to ask for a law to be changed. And she called on the nation of Israel to fast and pray for 3 days, and they did, and God granted that the law be changed, by touching the heart of the king of Persia. God rallied the King to literally kill the corrupt person who wanted a nation killed and this shows that her refusal to “accept” what was already in place for genocide of the Jews to happen in the law. So we see it was her knowledge of the God she knew and loved as a God who delivered his people from death, proved again to be the living and active part of the personality of the God who massively is able to save nations full of people!
The pain of misused authority from husbands or religious leaders. Issues where scripture is taken out of context by abusive husbands and tell their wives that they must submit even when the husband has no interest in protecting the welfare of his wife or family. To counter this, we must remember God does not put authority on the totem pole above the safety of innocent people. God is the God who protects. Issues where leaders take scripture out of context and tell their congregants “they must submit” even when there may be questionable practices or questionable attitudes by the leadership of the church is another place and time people must remember the “God who always protects” and prayers should be made regarding how God would like to reveal truth to save people from getting hurt.
The pain of not being able to preach the whole truth of the Bible because of some “anti-Christ societal norm creeping in”. Issues where “people who seem to want peace, and equality for everyone” in the secular world who may try to shut down the preaching of God’s word or the speaking of Biblical truth is another thing today’s Spirit filled Christian should not accept but fight against through prayer and fasting.
The pain of corrupt laws like legal abortions, the legalization of marijuana, and the legalization of homosexual marriages cause people to sin more freely than when those sins were not legal. The pain of these legalized sins warps the collective mind of society. Therefore, these things enable greater numbers of people to get hurt by those sins, simply by looking on at what is happening in society. We must keep before our minds that the Bible shows us corrupt laws CAN change through prayer and fasting EVEN though God might be allowing suffering under these sins for a season! We have many opportunities to see our whole world change even down to some laws that can be pivotal in turning our society away from sin, and with the hope of maintaining a more truthful collective mindset in discerning good from evil.
The pain of corrupt laws trying to prevent the true communication of God’s word, and God’s standards. Evil people do not want God’s word to go forth. Corrupt people have tried to shut down his truth since the garden of Eden and the jealousy of Cain. When God’s people pray to keep the Christian Church to continue worshipping Him and serving Him as we should, God often averts the plans of the enemy and preserves his Name, His reputation, and His Truth in the land!

All the above are injustices and evils the Bible mentions we should not accept and should not be lazy in standing against in our Christian walk. Although God is completely Sovereign and can use what the enemy meant for evil for the good of someone or for all his people, can use hardship to sanctify his people, and change the oppression or injustice, let us remember the many Biblical accounts where God changed something, some battle, some law, the heart of some elected official, or some famine or pestilence from shutting down the people of God he has sent to proclaim the kingdom of God. May we remember from which stock we come from, and remember our calling and election and make it sure through a firm footed and steady fight of faith! Pray with me against the above evils!

Prayer:

Oh Gracious Heavenly Father! Many or all of the evils I have listed are happening even as I speak at any time in the world and the enemy has been rampaging against the body of Christ! It’s as if our society has shifted into some grey and nebulous callous and warped un-reality zone! It’s as if there is an underlying message that unless the church shows anything besides being meek and mild we are labeled as “hateful intolerant bigots who need to be quickly woke!” Many times the “wives submit to your husbands card” is played under wrong circumstances, and my heart Lord is not to say that scripture is wrong, but to say it can be used by those with spiritual authority over God’s women and make them stripped of emotional sanity. And likewise, the “submit to your spiritual authorities” card is played under false pretense to suggest they belong to an “right and only right group of spiritual know-it-alls”. Please Lord teach the body of Christ how to address these evils so we can protect the body of Christ more like Jesus does! Teach us how to be loving in our messages proclaiming the word of God without compromising on truth, and may the pains of society screaming for us to “stop preaching the word of God as it is in the Bible”, be quenched and silenced! Oh God, may you bring your will to be done in our nation and other nations to establish your Kingdom and to revise and abolish the corrupt laws put in place by corrupt people to kill innocent children, to brainwash our society out of their God given sexual identities, and to steal our minds through drugs, Oh God! Please undo the pains we Christians have caused or allowed our nation by our passivity toward the corrupt laws now in place, and may Your will be established, and Godly laws put in place in our world to correct the unnecessary pains that I have just mentioned! And Lord, we know it is our personal sin that you overcame on the cross and that we can surrender to you for part of the reborn heart environment in which you have given the Christian to live. Many or most who are reading this know Lord we live in a world birthed by your Spirit, and by your Spirit we have been given a heart to love You, and be grieved by our own compromise! Oh God may we be granted progress by your Spirit within us, grant us true strength from heaven to go forward by your Spirit as we grow by absorbing your virtue, like the rain and snow from heaven! And may You feed us Lord with your truth so we may proclaim its many benefits and glories, and may you utterly change the face and heart of our lives, of our families and our country, and all the world around us so that You would be seen and glorified more and more in our world on a more massive level Oh Lord Our Lord, for You are Mighty to Save Oh God!

Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

The “Necessity” of Christian Hardships

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

The gospel when proclaimed in a Biblically sound way does and should, bring peace to us all. While this is true there also seems to be a notable number of scriptures that inform us that the God who sent Christ to earth to pay with his blood for peace to be established between the believer and God is also the one who deserves our trembling and shaking before him. He is the same Jesus who said in Mathew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.

With the many topics that the Lord introduces to his people in the NT that seem hard, “fasting” would fit the bill. Perhaps you’re a little like me, who have compared the OT plan of drawing near to God with the NT plan for such a work. We think the OT plan should be hard, and, we, —should be done with “hard” in the NT. I believe because we have a nuanced gospel, and can be so prone to settle for a quick and “easily explained” definition for telling what our Christian habits should be, and can get tempted to think that for us NT folks, if each part of our walk with God is not “ease producing” then it also cannot be “peace producing”, but that is simply not true. “Ease” for the Christian is not synonymous with “peace”. To use our distinguishing abilities, we will have to pull the reference cards out of our minds for these two words and closely examine some similarities and differences for discernment purposes on them, mentally write details to edit our definitions with important markers on them and file them away again for future use. We so much need to glean from the many “holy difficulties” that are either sent by Providence, or captured by God for His divine purposes having been sent from the “drizzle” attack of our blind Enemy.

Isn’t it true the Bible says in Luke 13 to make every effort to enter by the narrow gate? Luke 13:23-24 says, “Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” He said to them, 24“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.”

We can take the word “narrow” in this sentence to be an invitation from the Lord to do hard things. And we can take it as an invitation from the Lord that some hard things The Lord introduces to us are absolutely necessary for us to embrace and “take in” to make a regular part of our lives for a walk with God that stays on the narrow path.

1 Peter 2:20-21 CEV “You don’t gain anything by being punished for some wrong you have done. But God will bless you, if you have to suffer for doing something good. 21. After all, God chose you to suffer as you follow in the footsteps of Christ, who set an example by suffering for you.” I don’t bring up this short passage to suggest we need to be told about the subject of being punished for wrong doing but to suggest that if God would allow others to cause us to suffer and to “capture” different conditions of the suffering the enemy might like to dish out to us and have it all somehow be woven into part of His genius plan for us for our sanctification, then this plan that He has had from before the foundation of the world, just magnifies the amazing qualities of foreknowledge and Providence of our redemptive Shepherd King.

May we travel the hard road of the desert/wilderness with Christ, fasting as often as He may lead, and laying down “every weight and burden, and the sin that so easily besets”, so that we may go swiftly with Him and with perseverance, even running with Him as He leads!

Prayer:

Dear Lord, some days I feel nothing that excites me about going through the routines of the day, of getting out of bed, doing the morning rituals , hopping in the car and going to work, that I much consciously “spit out the lukewarm aftertaste” left from dinking of the world too much, remember that you have called me to yourself, think of your jealousy, and count the cost you paid again to “cleanse my palate to taste again what is truly true”. Help me Oh God, to not be slow to show up for prayer, and as much as only you can cause my drawing near to you to be a taking in of your substance Lord, and a breathing out of your goodness; may I ever keep my eyes on you to wash myself from the world, over and over and over again until others see really clearly, Christ in me. Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG