You are never more like Jesus than when you pray for others.
Pieces don’t fit. Wine runs out. Water bottles burst. These are facts of life. But Jesus responds with this invitation: “Bring your problems to me.
He took on your face in the hope that you would see his.
God wants to be as close to us as a branch is to a vine. One is an extension of the other. It’s impossible to tell where one starts and the other ends. The branch isn’t connected only at the moment of bearing fruit. The gardener doesn’t keep the branches in a box and then, on the day he wants grapes, glue them to the vine. No, the branch constantly draws nutrition from the vine. Separation means certain death.
When Jesus says he will keep you safe, he means it. Hell will have to get through him to get to you.
The difficulties have taken much away. I get that. But there is one gift your trouble cannot touch: your destiny.
His life is an example. I pray that God will heal Jim’s body. But until he does, God is using Jim to inspire people like me. God will do the same with you. He will use your struggle to change others.
If prayer depends on how I pray, I’m sunk. But if the power of prayer depends on the One who hears the prayer, and if the One who hears the prayer is my Daddy, then I have hope.
Jesus did not enter the world to help us save ourselves. He entered the world to save us from ourselves.
Just as a happy child cannot mis-hug, the sincere heart cannot mis-pray.
That’s why the most stressed-out people are control freaks. They fail at the quest they most pursue. The more they try to control the world, the more they realize they cannot. Life becomes a cycle of anxiety, failure; anxiety, failure; anxiety, failure. We can’t take control, because control is not ours to take.
Just when the womb gets too old for babies, Sarai gets pregnant. Just when the failure is too great for grace, David is pardoned. And just when the road is too dark for Mary and Mary, the angel glows and the Savior shows and the two women will never be the same. The lesson? Three words. Don’t give up.
Be anxious for nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Is this what he meant? Not exactly. He wrote the phrase in the present active tense, which implies an ongoing state. It’s the life of perpetual anxiety that Paul wanted to address. The Lucado Revised Translation reads, “Don’t let anything in life leave you perpetually breathless and in angst.” The presence of anxiety is unavoidable, but the prison of anxiety is optional.
Every quarter of a century an angel has touched one candle. Every prayer that was offered over the candle was answered. The Christmas Candle has become legendary.
What child, whilst summer is happening, bothers to think that summer will end? What child when snow is on the ground stops to remember that not long ago the ground was snowless?
If you see your troubles as nothing more than isolated hassles and hurts, you’ll grow bitter and angry. Yet if you see your troubles as tests used by God for his glory and your maturity, then even the smallest incidents take on significance.
To be saved by grace is to be saved by him – not by an idea, doctrine, creed, or church membership, but by Jesus himself, who will sweep into heaven anyone who so much as gives him the nod.
Life is a gift, albeit unassembled. It comes in pieces, and sometimes it falls to pieces.
Rather than ask God to change your circumstances, ask him to use your circumstances to change you. Life is a required course. Might as well do your best to pass it.
It does little good to make the trip and miss the journey!