Life: not this but this. . .

HT: Facets of Grace

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Still, my soul, be still!

Still my soul be still
And do not fear
Though winds of change may rage tomorrow
God is at your side
No longer dread
The fires of unexpected sorrow

Chorus:
God You are my God
And I will trust in You and not be shaken
Lord of peace renew
A steadfast spirit within me
To rest in You alone

Still my soul be still
Do not be moved
By lesser lights and fleeting shadows
Hold onto His ways
With shield of faith
Against temptations flaming arrows

Still my soul be still
Do not forsake
The Truth you learned in the beginning
Wait upon the Lord
And hope will rise
As stars appear when day is dimming.

Words and Music by Keith & Kristyn Getty & Stuart Townend. Hear it sung here.

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Why is this happening to me?

Mark Altrogge reminds us that God doesn’t ever do something without a purpose and plan. In this post he shares several benefits of affliction in our lives including the following:

• Afflictions deliver us from pride.
• Afflictions make us sympathetic, merciful and slower to judge. 
• Afflictions remind us of the brevity of this life and make us long for heaven where our true treasure is.
• Afflictions stir us to pray and keep us dependent on God.
• Afflictions are opportunities for Christ to display his power in us.

And there are more right here.

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When your faith is tested!

Pastor Paul  Tautages shares one way to find strength in the midst of your life’s trials, temptations and struggles. I have found them very useful in my life so I am sharing them with you:

To strengthen your heart and soul, and feed your sometimes-weary faith, follow David’s example. Pray these Psalms back to God. Here are some of the confident affirmations of God’s strength that fed my soul the past few days, which I wrote down in my journal. Recite these to yourself over and over again. Pray through them for yourself, and for fellow believers who are also under spiritual attack, or for those whose faith is being tested.

• Psalm 55:16 “But I call to God, and the LORD will save me.”
• Psalm 55:17 “Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice.”
• Psalm 55:18 “He redeems my soul in safety”
• Psalm 55:22 “Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.”
• Psalm 56:3-4 “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?”
• Psalm 56:8 “You have kept count of my tossings;put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”
• Psalm 56:9 “This I know, that  God is for me.”
• Psalm 56:11 “…in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?”
• Psalm 56:13 “For you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.”
• Psalm 57:1 “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.”
• Psalm 57:9-10 “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.”
• Psalm 59:9 “O my Strength, I will watch for you, for you, O God, are my fortress.”
• Psalm 59:10 “My God in his steadfast lovewill meet me”
• Psalm 59:16-17 “But I will sing of your strength; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress. O my Strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love.”
• Psalm 61:2-3 “…from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy.”
• Psalm 62:1-2 “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.”
• Psalm 62:5-8 “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.  He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”

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Jerry Bridges: Our first priority in trials

“Our first priority in times of adversity is to honor and glorify God by trusting Him. We tend to make our first priority the gaining of relief from our feelings of heartache or disappointment or frustration. This is a natural desire, and God has promised to give us grace sufficient for our trials and peace for our anxieties (2 Corinthians 12:9, Philippians 4:6-7). But just as God’s will is to take precedence over our will (Jesus Himself said, “Yet not as I will, but as you will”Matthew 26:39), so God’s honor is to take precedence over our feelings. We honor God by choosing to trust Him when we don’t understand what He is doing or why He has allowed some adverse circumstance to occur. As we seek God’s glory, we may be sure that He has purposed our good and that He will not be frustrated in fulfilling that purpose.”

Jerry Bridges - Trusting God, p. 52.

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He delivers by trouble

“Though God deliver us not out of trouble, yet he delivers us from its evil; from despair, by supporting our spirits: nay, he delivers by trouble, for he sanctifies trials to cure the soul, and by little troubles he delivers us from those that are much greater and eternal.”- Richard Sibbes (HT: JoeThorn)

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Follow up: knocked 115 feet down the highway

Pastor Dave Doran shares how his son who was hit by an 80,000 lb. truck going 55 mph is doing. He talks about God’s grace to him and his family:

The fact is that God is in control of all things, so that means He could have prevented the truck from hitting my son altogether had He so chosen. He didn’t because He has something that He wants to accomplish in Derek’s life (and our family’s and among those around Derek’s life). But please don’t assign grandiose meaning to those words “He has something He wants to accomplish in Derek’s life”–I mean simply that this very trial Derek is experiencing is another opportunity for him (and those around him) to grow in grace and serve Christ.

Surviving this accident is not some heavenly sign of future greatness. He’s alive today because of God’s grace, but here’s the newsflash–so are you. That one person survives and another doesn’t means that God’s plan for the one’s life was complete and the other’s isn’t. The difference is in God’s will, not the value or merit of the people.

So, I live feeling the tension that we are to rejoice in God’s kindness and mercy that has been graciously provided, but we must do so in a way that recognizes that God has not in any way been unkind, merciless, or lacked grace toward those for whom He had different plans. Since the outcomes were not based in the merit of the recipient, but in the sovereign plan for the God who can be trusted, we bow the knee in worship regardless of outcome. He knows and does what is best for His own glory and the good of those who have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. (Read more here).

This is a follow up to a previous post.

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Knocked 115 feet down the highway

Please continue to pray for Derek, the son of a pastor who attended the same college and seminary I did.  Dave Doran, pastor of Inter-City Baptist Church in Allen Park, MI, writes,

My youngest son, Derek, is an 18 year old high school senior who literally entered the school of hard knocks last week. On his way home from a friend’s house he pulled off the road to help another motorist whose front tire had come completely off so that the car was shooting sparks all over the freeway. Derek approached the car on the passenger side, but when he could not get the driver’s attention to see if she was okay he came around to the driver’s side. As he tried to talk to an unresponsive driver a semi-truck hit him. Incredibly, he survived the hit. I am typing this as I sit at the end of his hospital bed, where he lies sleeping and I am filled periodically with praise and thanks to God.

Derek was pretty badly banged up–9 broken ribs, punctured lung, fractured skull, broken clavicle and scapula, a laceration in his liver, a handful of fractures in his neck and spine, as well as a couple of cuts that needed stitches and loads of abrasions head to toe from being knocked an estimated 115 feet down the freeway by the impact. Even as I type this I can’t believe that is all that he suffered. He got hammered by a semi going 55 miles an hour. God showed him and our family incredible mercy and we are exceedingly thankful.

Read how God had prepared his family through the study and preaching of the Word for this event.

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Wish life were better than. . . ?

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9 reasons you can face anything

By the blood of his Son, God has promised infallibly…

1. I will meet all your needs according to my riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19).
2. My power will be made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
3. I will strengthen you and help you and hold you up with my righteous right hand (Isaiah 41:10).
4. I will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5).
5. I will not let any testing befall you for which I do not give you grace to bear (1 Corinthians 10:13).
6. I will take the sting away from your death with the blood of my son (1 Corinthians 15:55f).
7. I will raise you from the dead imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:52).
8. I will transform your lowly body to be like my glorious body, by the power that enables me even to subject all things to myself (Philippians 3:21).
9. I will do this without fail because I am absolutely sovereign over everything and therefore, I can do all things, and no purpose of mine can be thwarted (Job 42:2).

This list is adapted from the sermon When Jesus Meets Disability by John Piper

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