Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your
faith develops perseverance...so that you may be mature and complete not lacking anything.
(James 1: 2, 3)
Now here's what others say....
Difficulties to a Christian are only miracles that have not yet happened!Anonymous
You may never know that Jesus is all you need, until Jesus is all you have.
Corrie Ten Boom
I thank God for my handicaps, for through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.
Helen Keller
If you feel like you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on! Because God's a God of miracles, and He's holding the other end.
Pat Hicks
Let us not be surprised when we have to face difficulties. When the wind blows hard on a tree, the roots stretch and grow the stronger, Let it be so with us. Let us not be weaklings, yielding to every wind that blows, but strong in spirit to resist.
Amy Carmichael
If you have been mistreated, cheated or deceived and if your heart has been right all along, be assured that God knows this. God will eventually vindicate you, but in the meantime you should be confidently aware that God knows the truth concerning what has happened to you. He knows if your heart has been right.
Theodore Epp
The agony of man's affliction is often necessary to put him into the right mood to face the fundamental things of life. The Psalmist says. Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now I have kept Thy Word.
Oswald Chambers
Trials should not surprise us, or cause us to doubt God's faithfulness. Rather, we should actually be glad for them. God sends trials to strengthen our trust in him so that our faith will not fail. Our trials keep us trusting; they burn away our self confidence and drive us to our Saviour.
Edmund Clowney
Problems, difficulty and adversity promote a sense of dependency. That sense of dependency is looked down upon by the world. That sense of dependency is what Peter was speaking of in I Peter 5:7 when he said, "Casting all your cares on Him, for He cares for you." If you could handle every problem that came up in life by yourself you would have no need of God. Hence the subject of vanity or pride comes to the forefront.
Charles S.
Each of us may be sure that if God sends us on stony paths He will provide us with strong shoes, and He will not send us out on any journey for which He does not equip us well.
Alexander MacLaren
In some way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.
C. S. Lewis
The easiest way to escape from our sufferings is to be willing they should endure as long as God pleases.
John Wesley
God sometimes strips us of anything that has undeserved importance in our life. Because we often we don't realize that God is all we need until He is all we have.
Suzanne K.
God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them.
John H Aughey
Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering but in being weary of joy.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The apostle Paul could withstand adversities arising in his life with victory in his soul for he looked upon them as being divinely sent or allowed to work good in his life! When faced with the thorn in the flesh, Paul testifies: (II Cor.12:10) "Therefore I take pleasure (realize I will gain spiritual strength) in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then I am strong." Paul understood the positive when facing adversity and had the right attitude toward his adversity, and his weakness resulted in strength.
Walter S.
It is not on the pinnacle of success and ease where men and women grow most. It is often down in the valley of heartache and disappointment and reverses where men and women grow into strong characters.
Ezra Taft Benson
God has designed that His Spirit should dwell in us to comfort and cheer us in our onward march through life, in times of adversity, to give us strength and courage to bear up faithfully under all trials that may be brought upon us, that we may maintain our integrity to the end.
George F. Richards,
You don't uncork Champagne and shout hallelujah for life all the time. Sometimes you just try to endure it, in pain. Mature religion reminds us of an ethical dimension and a tragic dimension which the phrase 'celebration of life' does not contain. Commitment to a way of life and the capacity to endure what life does to us are surely as crucial as expressing our jollity at the ambiguous vitalities about us and within.
The trials of life are what build our very character and mature us. They bring on the blessings of change and the experience of the new self that we want so desperately to become. The new self is not self sufficient, he is God-sufficient. If there are no trials, there will be no dependency, and if there is no dependency, there is no need for Him.
When you face adversity, you can be led to ask many questions. Some serve a useful purpose; others do not. To ask, Why does this have to happen to me? Why do I have to suffer this, now? What have I done to cause this? will lead you into blind alleys. It really does no good to ask questions that reflect opposition to the will of God. Rather ask, What am I to do? What am I to learn from this experience? What am I to change? Whom am I to help? How can I remember my many blessings in times of trial? Willing sacrifice of deeply held personal desires in favour of the will of God is very hard to do. Yet, when you pray with real conviction, 'Please let me know Thy will' and 'May Thy will be done,' you are in the strongest position to receive the maximum help from your loving Father.
Richard G. Scott.
If your reputation is perfectly intact on every front. If you never irritate anyone. If you never make a stir, you might be doing something wrong - or more likely, you're not doing something right. "Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets" (Luke 6:26). The Bible has a crystal clear promise: All who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" (2 Tim. 3:12). If we never experience persecution. If we never make a single soul angry (as Christ often did), something is probably wrong.
R Terry
The acid test of our faith in the promises of God is never found in the easy-going, comfortable ways of life, but in the great emergencies, the times of storm and of stress, the days of adversity, when all human aid fails.
Ethel Bell
In relation to events that will yet take place. The kind of trials, troubles, and sufferings which we shall have to cope with, it is to me a matter of very little moment. These things are in the hands of God. He dictates the affairs of the human family, and directs and controls our affairs and the great thing that we, as a people, have to do is to seek after and cleave unto our God, to be in close affinity with Him. To seek for his guidance. To his blessing to lead and guide us in the right path. Then it matters not what it is nor who it is that we have to contend with. God will give us strength according to our day.
John Taylor
A soldier who fought in Germany during the second world war spoke about those terrible times.
"They say we had defeated this group of German soldiers." he said. Actually they just gave up. I stood off to the side as a handful of our men gathered the Germans in formation.
One by one each German soldier was stripped of his personal belongings. Some stood tall and without a struggle had watches, rings, and wallets removed. A few cried and begged to keep their wedding rings and photos, but to no avail. "This was war," he told me in a humble, soft tone.
Suddenly, a German standing close to me turned his head and as if looking around for someone he knew, grabbed my hand and placed his watch in it. I was stunned for a moment. "Out of all the British soldiers nearby he chose me," he continued.
Pausing for a few moments, and looking down at the floor and re-living that moment in his mind, he said, "The German took control. Knowing that someone was about to take everything from him, the German soldier chose not to have it stolen but to give it as a gift to someone he selected. Me."
We are all aware of the atrocities of that war. But the soldier will never forget the battle fought inside each of the participants.
That German soldier had taught the British soldier to turn his adversities around and take control of situations.
A few years ago a young attractive woman noticed a small lump behind her ear as she was brushing her hair. As the days went on she noticed that the lump was getting larger, so she decided to see her doctor. Her worst fears were confirmed. The doctor told her that the lump was a large tumor that would require immediate surgery.
When she awoke following the surgery she found her entire head wrapped like a mummy. She could see herself in a mirror only through two tiny holes cut into the wrapping.
Desperate to see what she looked like she unwound the large bandage from her head and was shocked to see that her once attractive features had become disfigured by a paralysis caused by damage to facial nerves during the removal of the tumour.
Standing before the mirror she told herself that she had one choice to make, to laugh or to cry. She decided to laugh.
Sadly, the various therapies tried were unsuccessful in alleviating the facial paralysis. However, that decision made to laugh in the face of adversity has allowed this woman to carry on with her life with joy.
Trials are an evidence of a Father's love. They are given as a blessing to his children. They are given as opportunities for growth. Now, how do we approach them? How do we overcome them? How are we magnified by them? There seems to be a reason why we lose our composure in adversity-why we think we can no longer cope with what we're faced with here in this life.
There is a reason why we give up, why we 'fall apart at the seams' so to speak. The reason may be so simple that we lose sight of it. Could it be it's because we begin to lose contact with our greatest source of strength— God? He is the key to our enjoying sweetness in adversity-in gaining strength from our trials— he and he alone.
H. B Peterson.
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole.
Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther.
Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.
Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly.
The trials of life are what build our very character and mature us. They bring on the blessings of change and the experience of the new self that we want so desperately to become. The new self is not self sufficient, he is God-sufficient. If there are no trials, there will be no dependency, and if there is no dependency, there is no need for Him.
When Kassim Grant was lying on a hospital bed, little did he know that he would soon be singing for the Lord.
Kassim or 'Moses' as he is called, was shot three times one night when gunmen broke into his house.
He was shot in the face, with the bullet exiting through his head, in the stomach and in the buttocks by members of another gang with whom his gang had a dispute. Two weeks later, he was back on the road but this time instead of avenging his injuries, he had a story to tell.
Moses got his name after a series of pastors told him that God had a purpose for him and that he had been called to bring people to Christ. He said it was after that producer Danny Brownie gave him the name Moses
Kassim, who has been deejaying gospel for the past four and a half years, was a part of the group called the KGs which was made up of himself and Mr. Gallimore. The group was named by gospel singer Ziggy Soul, who had given them the name because both had the same initials.
However, both unwillingly embarked on solo careers after they had started doing solo recordings in the studio.
"When we met Danny, and we started singing, me find myself a write songs and Gallimore start write him own song. We started recording our own songs. Because of this, we couldn't go out there as KGs when I was the only person doing my songs. So, we worked something out that we would both use our names and still do combinations if we want to," he said.
The friendship between Moses and Mr. Gallimore dates back to high school, when both would clash lyrically with each other, with Moses imitating Bounty Killer and Mr. Gallimore acting out the part of Beenie Man.
"Music is a thing you're born into. You can't just wake up at 20 and decide you are going to take it up. You have to have it from childhood, from you're bout five or six," Moses explained.
Moses, who became a Christian shortly after he left the hospital, said that being shot had nothing to do with his conversion. Rather, he had gone to summer camp in the hope of giving the community of Rema, where he grew up, a break. It was while at camp he turned his life around.
Kassim, like Mr. Gallimore, also recalls the Gospel Train stageshow when they were booed by the audience. While Mr. Gallimore recalls it as memorable, for Moses it is quite the opposite since it was embarrassing.
He recalls being stuck on stage as the crowd showed their disapproval of them deejaying on the 'street sweeper rhythm'.
Moses laughs when he remembers the moment, especially when he talks about the comments that he got from Tommy Cowan, who thought they had done well when they had left the stage.
"They never had any problems with us but they couldn't stomach the hardcore rhythm. That was a few years ago," he said.
From that time, he has never had that problem again, especially since he is now under the wings of Danny Brownie, whom he sees as a father.
Moses, who is 21 and has a son, says Brown has taught him certain basic things about stage performances, such as watching the reaction of the audience at the back, since they determine how well you are doing.
As for album plans, he has rested that in the lap of Danny Brownie, who he says has been guiding them thus far.
"Every time someone asks me that, I tell them ask Danny. He will allow me to start working on the album when the time is right," he said
Jan E.
Handling Good Times and Adversity
By Andrew Knox. USA.
Many golfers know money and fame can vanish after a losing streak or an injury. So how do they keep their lives and careers in perspective?
So how do they keep their lives and careers in perspective?
A number of professional players come up with the same answer.
Ben Crane said, It's a long journey to get to the PGA Tour for most players, and so I definitely say that my faith has been what's really kept me in 'down times.
Jonathan Byrd said, I don't know how people get through day to day in life, you know. It's tough out here at times. Even just life, without Christ, I don't know-it's empty.
Esteban Toledo explained, I know God changed me a long time ago. I mean, I used to kinda be on the other side of the road, and through Him I'm on this side of the road. I'm still learning a lot of things about God, because it's the only way you can make it in life.
Pat Bates is another PGA golfer who hasn't lost sight of God's role in his life.
Four years ago, Pat suffered a herniated disc in his neck. It required surgery and afterwards he was unable to walk or use his left hand.
Pat said, Not a good position to be in, for anybody, let alone a professional golfer. So it was a tough time that first month. I couldn't really move my hand for a month. Took me about a week to walk. So I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to play professional golf again. And that's when it really helped to be a Christian. Golf had been, even as a Christian, an idol to me, and it got between me and the God. So I just said, 'You know what, God, if I can make a comeback and play golf, great, and if I can't I'll find something else to do. Wherever You want me to go, I'll do it.
His health was fully restored. After a few years in the smaller golf tournaments, he is very grateful to be back on the PGA tour, now. I feel very fortunate that I've been able to come back and get on the PGA tour." Pat said, "God's plan was perfect for me. I went through all that, you know, even before my surgery: hard times in the Nike tour, being broke and all that thing.
All that has made me a better person, a better Christian, and a better golfer, even.
He also said, So, I'm thankful for that, I really am. James says 'Jump for joy when you face trials of many kinds.
Steve Hulka is Pat Bates' caddy. Steve said, Pat said a great thing, not too long ago. He said he doesn't care what he shoots, he just wants to bear fruit.
And we've adopted that motto, Steve went on, because our lives, between the ropes as player and caddy, go beyond the playing of the game.
It's what your walk is, it's what your example is, it's what you're setting for those people that pay the money to come and see you.
Pat and his caddy Steve strive to show God at work in their lives even while on the PGA tour. Their fellow Christian pro golfers feel just as strongly about their own example.
Larry Mize said, The difference He has made in my life is - now I understand my purpose for being here. I'm here to get to know Him, become dependent on Him and to share the Good News.
You know, you see people who have money, fame and fortune, they have everything and they're still not happy. God gives me true contentment-and knowing who I am and where I came from and where I'm going. So, there's just nothing like it.
Esteban Toledo added, I try to tell them to take God into your heart. That's what God wants. He wants you to take Him into your heart, that's what it's all about.
Jonathan Byrd said, As Believers we know we're going to Heaven and we're saved, and that's great reassurance; knowing your sins are forgiven and Christ has paid the price for them.
Ben Crane added, God really provides us with the peace that transcends all understanding. And as we get to know Him that's when you learn the meaning of what your life is all about.
Pat Bates concluded, saying, I think the most important thing to God is how we act, not necessarily whether we win or lose, it's how we handle ourselves on the golf course, through adversity and through good times.
Ken F.
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