Category Archives: Truths

What Can We Learn From Hard Times, Sorrow, And Despair

Imagine this…

After a 9 months of anticipation, you and your spouse give birth to a beautiful baby girl. All checks out fine. You’re excited, she’s as beautiful as can be. Then hours later you realize that at the exact hour your daughter was born, your cousin was found dead, in his home from a brain aneurysm.

Imagine this…

You’ve just graduated medical school and married the man of your dreams. Now you’re thrilled to move onto an exciting chapter of your life. You move to a new city on the other side of the country, excited about the countless adventures you and your spouse will have as you begin your new family. 4 weeks into your new adventure, your dad(who moved with you to be close) suddenly dies.

It seems to me that many times our greatest joys in life can come at a time that is followed by our greatest sorrows. Some times these sorrows seem to come out of no where, and we begin to question, to doubt ourselves and what is real.

It’s tempting in times of sorrow to get angry, get mad, get frustrated with God.

“WHY ME!!!! WHY THEM OH GOD?”

Our world is full on imperfect situations and broken lives.

Both of the stories above happened in my family in the last 4 months. As we walk through them together as a family, I am only reminded that our life here on earth is temporary, this is not our home, Heaven is what we where created for.

The truth is that it’s these challenging times, not the easy going times in life that mold us and grow us as people. You see if there where no hard times in life, we would never grow, we would just exist. It’s the challenging times that edge away at our ego’s and preconceived ideas to equip us with wisdom for the future.

Sometimes we never know when that equipping will be used. I encourage each of you to have faith friends, that the hard times will be useful in the future.

This week a good friend of mine had a situation similar to my own above. After months of anticipation, they gave birth to a handsome baby boy, only to realize that the big guy has trouble breathing when he eats. Dr’s do dozens of tests and still cannot figure out why.

How are we to feel in these moments of despair? “It’s a CHILD God! This helpless little person….”

As I was texting to encourage my brother in Christ, I was prompted to share the truth I’m blogging about today. I wrote:

“It’s the hard moments that equip us to be useful people. In the easy times, most of us learn nothing”

The imperfections in our world are just evidence of the SIN in our world. The world was not always this way. God first created it perfect, it was when we decided to reject God and turn away from his love that we chose to SIN and bring upon the world we live in today.

That’s my word to you today. If you’re facing challenges and moments of pure despair, go to GOD!

Cry out to the One who understands, Jesus Christ the creator of all things! He is the one who has already won the war, the one who gathers up the pieces of our broken lives and loves us enough to stand with us, in spite of ourselves and our own shortcomings, to sanctify us so God the father can welcome us into eternal life with Him!

Romans 3:24 says ‘And all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus’

Know that even now if you are in despair because you don’t know if heaven is your home, the bible says ALL of us have sinned and fallen short of being accepted by God, it’s only through receiving Jesus Christ and faith in Him that we can be saved. If you have not made a decision to pray and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior of your life, I encourage you today to do that. He’s here, loving you in spite of everything in your world, in spite of you. He loves you anyway, don’t push Him away.

She Started Playing “Hallelujah” On Her Violin In A Subway. But Then She Shared Why…

On the New York City subway, Lindsey walked up with her violin. Baffled strangers at first gave no reaction whatsoever. However, as soon as she started to play this incredible song, everyone was blown away. Through this video, Lindsey wants everyone to value one’s life and give happiness to everyone around.

At the end, she shares the SOURCE of her happiness and shares how JESUS, the God on the universe is the one who always see’s each of us as beautiful. He loves us and created us to do His work.

Remember the reason for the season

 

Crazy Love: Chapter 1 Review

Each year on Facebook, a group of men and women read a book to start the new year.

This year we are diving into Francis Chan’s book “Crazy Love”

Here is my thoughts from the first chapter:

Chapter 1 –

In the preface of the book Francis writes: The core problem isn’t the fact that we’re lukewarm, halfhearted, and stagnant Christians. The crux of it all is why we are this way, and it is because we have an inaccurate view of God.

This is so true in my life. He uses the analogy of our mind as a soda pop can and GOD as the size of the ocean, with us trying to fit God into our Soda pop can brain and defining him by the little bit of Him that could fit in the can.

For the first chapter of the book, the part that hit me the most, is just how darn selfish I am. Reading this with my wife Kayelani, I had to apologize for the way I live my life and the way I think about God. Thinking about God as what he would do “for us” or “bless us”. Praying to Him to bless people in my life.

God owes me nothing.

I am not special.

I am not better then anyone else

We are all sinners in front of a just God, and as the writer points out in his video “God won’t judge us on a curve”

The point of the book that grabbed my attention the most was the verse in Daniel 4:35 where it says “All the people of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “what have you done?”

God does not have to be accountable to anyone. “God just is”

My thought for today is to take a moment and just stop. Stop planning, Stop creating, Stop Doing, and just think about the magic of our world. Everything we see in creation is evidence, pointing us to God.

The real beauty in all of this is even though God owes me nothing, He gave his one-and-only Son(who He LOVED) to die in my place for the Sin I committed in my life.

That is the part that is remarkable.

Even though “God Owes Us Nothing” He gave us His everything, and calls us to Himself, and invites us to spend eternity with Him.

That is incredible.

http://www.art-spire.com/wp-content/gallery/2011/juin_2011/29-06-11_Ong_Chew_Peng/Ong_Chew_Peng.jpg

Living Life In Hard Times Without Fear

It seems like everyday that I look to social media, I see more and more stories of challenges in our world. Beheadings, mass killings,  and tragedy after tragedy remind me the truth that we are truly living today in a fallen world.

It is easy to be fearful if you do not have hope. 

But, I am not afraid. It is not because I am any different than you. We actually have a lot in common, and the only difference for me is what I believe about  “Jesus”.

I believe that everything we are seeing in our world today is the fruit of our broken sinful world with the devil verses Jesus, the one and only God and creator of the universe.

I believe that God created the world in 7 days and it was a place without sin, but the devil tempted man and man chose to be separate from God (that is what SIN is, choosing to be separated from God) and man has forever been cursed to be born with a sinful nature, in need of a savior.

This brings us to Jesus and who I believe Jesus is.

I believe Jesus is the son of God, sent by God over 2000 years ago to be a holy sacrifice to be the payment for all of the world’s sin. Jesus was all man and all God at the same time. He came into this world-tempted life, but he never sinned. When we took Jesus and put him on a cross, his death not only paid for my sin, but his death paid for all sin and conquered the curse of sin FOREVER.

Jesus has already won the war…

An analogy my friend Andy Doyle shared with me is that our world today is like the Allies invasion into Germany in WWII.

There was a single event that was the decisive moment of the Allies winning WWII. That event was known as D-Day on June 6th, 1944 when 24,000 troops stormed the beaches of Normandy.

It did not end on D-Day. It ended almost a year later in May of 1945 with the unconditional surrender of the German army.

You see the decisive moment in the war of Good VS Evil is Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, conquering sin once and for all 2,000 years ago.

The time we are in now is like the 11 month period after D-Day, where allied forces fought until the surrender.

When you hear stories of wars, terrorism, and death and wonder why the world is like it is, read your Bible. The book of Revelation shares that there will be wars at the end of this world and prophecies (many of which have or are being fulfilled) are coming to pass.

One of the greatest deceptions of the devil today to Christians in our world is the thought that “the end of the world won’t happen in your lifetime”.

Who are we to know that the world won’t end during our lifetime?

That is why Paul in his second letter to the Church in Corinthians writes:

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain.  For he says,

“In the time of my favor I heard you,
    and in the day of salvation I helped you.”

I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.

– 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2

Paul commands us to accept Christ’s gift of salvation, be reconciled with God and THEN he implores us to urgently share Christ with others.

What if it was now in our generation that our world was coming to an end? How would you live?

Would you pray right now and be reconciled with Christ? Romans 10:13 says:

for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Christ loved you before you where even born and He has so much love in Him that He is calling out to you right now, to come to Him and accept Him and be saved.

If you have already accepted Christ into your life, who should you share His message of hope with?

Be encouraged, share this message with others

God Bless.
#Jesusalreadywon