You change your life by changing your heart.
God gives us people to love and things to use, not things to love and people to use.
He saw you cast into a river of life you didn’t request. He saw you betrayed by those you love. He saw you with a body that gets sick and a heart that grows weak. He saw you in your own garden of gnarled trees and sleeping friends. He saw you staring into the pit of your own failures and the mouth of your own grave. He saw you in your own garden of Gethsemane and he didn’t want you to be alone... He would rather go to hell for you than to heaven without you.
How can a person deal with anxiety? You might try what one fellow did. He worried so much that he decided to hire someone to do his worrying for him. He found a man who agreed to be his hired worrier for a salary of $200,000 per year. After the man accepted the job, his first question to his boss was, “Where are you going to get $200,000 per year?” To which the man responded, “That’s your worry.
You’ll get through this. You fear you won’t. We all do. We fear that the depression will never lift, the yelling will never stop, the pain will never leave. Here in the pits, surrounded by steep walls and angry brothers, we wonder, Will this gray sky ever brighten? This load ever lighten? We feel stuck, trapped, locked in. Predestined for failure. Will we ever exit this pit? Yes! Deliverance is to the Bible what jazz music is to Mardi Gras: bold, brassy, and everywhere.
The more radical the change, the greater the joy. And it’s worth every effort, for this is the joy of God.
Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart – poisoned as it is with pride and pain – and replacing it with his own. Rather than tell you to change, he creates the change. Do you clean up so he can accept you? No, he accepts you and begins cleaning you up. His dream isn’t just to get you into heaven but to get heaven into you.
For you to be healthy, you must rest. Slow down, and God will heal you. He will bring rest to your mind, to your body, and most of all to your soul. He will lead you to green pastures.
God has given us peace in our pain. He covers us all the time. Even when we are out of control, he is still there.
But prayer isn’t asking God to do what we want. Prayer is asking God to what is right.
The presence of anxiety is unavoidable, but the prison of anxiety is optional.
The stone was moved – not for Jesus – but for the women; not so Jesus could come out, but so the women could see in!
But God will use your mess for good. We see a perfect mess; God sees a perfect chance to train, test, and teach the future prime minister. We see a prison; God sees a kiln. We see famine; God sees the relocation of his chosen lineage. We call it Egypt; God calls it protective custody, where the sons of Jacob can escape barbaric Canaan and multiply abundantly in peace. We see Satan’s tricks and ploys. God sees Satan tripped and foiled.
There are times when God sends thunder to stir us. There are times when God sends blessings to lure us. But then there are times when God sends nothing but silence as he honors us with the freedom to choose where we spend eternity.
To live as God’s child is to know, at this very instant, that you are loved by your Maker not because you try to please him and succeed, or fail to please him and apologize, but because he wants to be your Father. Nothing more. All your efforts to win his affection are unnecessary. All your fears of losing his affection are needless. You can no more make him want you than you can convince him to abandon you. The adoption is irreversible. You have a place at his table.
The cross, the zenith of history. All of the past pointed to it, and all of the future would depend upon it. It’s the great triumph of heaven: God is on the earth. And it is the great tragedy of earth: man has rejected God.
Don’t you think God can work however he chooses?” “I believe God worked, and the rest is up to us.
Sometimes God takes his time:.
This verse is a call, not to a feeling, but to a decision and a deeply rooted confidence that God exists, that he is in control, and that he is good.
If Jesus heals you instantly, praise him. If you are still waiting for healing, trust him. Your suffering is your sermon.