Zondervan Inspire

Touch the Face of God

The journey to the Celestial City can be every bit as arduous as John Bunyan depicted in his famous Pilgrim's Progress. It will not always be filled with happy faces, fun times, and an incessant fare of upbeat praise choruses. There will be tears too, and through it all the ache of yearning. We face into the wind as we journey through this fallen world, and there are plenty of struggles ahead. Nowhere does the Bible say it will be easy. We have only been assured that it is infinitely worthwhile.

But we also journey in hope, and by hope we mean a confident and sustaining anticipation of a positive future. We have received sufficient assurances that we are on the right track (traveling mercies, Anne Lamott calls them) to keep us pressing forward. It is true that for the time being we know only "in part." But someday we will see him face-to-face, and will know him fully, just as we are already fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). The time is coming when we will "slip the surly bonds of earth ... and touch the face of God."

From A Little Guide to Christian Spirituality: Three Dimensions of Life with God

by Glen G. Scorgie

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God's Silent Work

Fanny Crosby was not content to be a victim. She voraciously memorized five books of the Old Testament and most of the New Testament by the time she was ten years old. She attended the New York Institute for the Blind, where she became a teacher and gifted poet. After surviving the cholera epidemic in 1849, Fanny realized something was missing in her life and turned to Christ at the age of 30. God had been silently working in her heart. The poetry that formerly flowed from her heart turned into hymns of praise, many of which we still sing today.

In Genesis 41 we see God silently working in Joseph's life. Joseph could have grown bitter and inflamed by the dreadful circumstances of his life. But amazingly, Joseph experienced God's silent work as much in slavery and in prison as he did when he rose to prominence.

Whatever your circumstances, you can trust that God is working behind the scenes. When you experience trouble—and you will—God can make you fruitful and full of praise, just as he did with Joseph and with Fanny Crosby.

From New Women's Devotional Bible

New International Version (NIV™)
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Celebrating 30 Years
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Flourish in New Ways

Sometimes the discipline God allows into our lives is highly individualized, and is determined by our unique circumstances. We may sustain injuries in a traffic accident, lose our job, or become obliged to care for an aging, invalid relative. We should not curse these events as bad luck, or become embittered by them. Even through such highly undesirable experiences, the dynamics of Christian spirituality can flourish in new ways. In all such forms of suffering God is still compassionately at work — salvaging good for those who love him (Romans 8:28). These unique circumstantial disciplines function as refining fires that produce qualities of enduring value to God's glory. Their ultimate purpose is to see the relational disposition, moral character, and purposeful actions of Christ mirrored in his resilient followers.

From A Little Guide to Christian Spirituality: Three Dimensions of Life with God

by Glen G. Scorgie

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Expand Your View of Faith

God is consistent but hardly predictable. You can pray for healing for four people, and only one might get better. For every story of one being provided with meat, hundreds of people die of hunger. When someone dies in spite of our prayers, or when something doesn't happen that we prayed for, we tend to believe that God doesn't always come through. But I'm slowly learning to refuse to be tripped up by such things.

Never again will I offer up an explanation that spins God as weak or passive. If God doesn't come through in the way I want him to, it should expand my view of faith, not shrink it. It means there is something else going on, something I can't see or understand, and I have the opportunity to be swept up in it or not.

From Reckless Faith: Let Go and Be Led

by Beth Guckenberger

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Run the Best You Can

I had a season in my work during which it felt like all sorts of things were going wrong. We had had a fractious congregational meeting over a staff member who was leaving. Another key staff member had resigned over difficult personal issues, and a partner in ministry was moving across the country. I felt alone and ineffective. I was driving to church to make an announcement when the thought occurred to me, This is one of those moments when I get to choose persistence in the face of looming obstacles. It was not a time for me to waste energy by wondering if I should be somewhere else. It was not a time for me to question whether I could do it. This was — for me — one of those moments when I would decide whether the quitter's gene was dominant or recessive. And it was strangely liberating for me to say to God in that moment, "I'll just keep running this course. I don't know that I can win, but I will run the best I can."

From When the Game Is Over It All Goes Back in the Box 

by John Ortberg

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Qualities that Suffering Produces

 

Life for godly [Polish] people was not easy during the long, hard years of Soviet occupation. Some of them suffered terribly, and others lived with continual frustration and restrictions, but they learned how to live well under them. As I grew to know the believers who had suffered for their faith and had stood firm in hardship and distress, I could not avoid seeing the certain qualities that suffering and deprivation had produced in them. Their faces were often lined deeply beyond their years, but their eyes shone. They were frequently close to tears, but smiles and laughter quickly lit up their faces. They conversed readily on serious topics but loved a joke. They spoke little about their hardships and always with a shrug of the shoulder. And they were hungry for God, they loved the teaching of his Word, their praise was infectious, and their prayers shook the rafters.

From Flowing Streams: Journeys of a Life Well Lived

by Stuart Briscoe

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Strength to Overcome Anything

The challenges in your life are real, but Jesus is the truth! If you will learn to praise Jesus Christ regardless of your circumstances, you will find inner freedom and joy, and you will have the strength to overcome whatever you are faced with. The joy of the Lord is such a key, because Nehemiah said, "The joy of the Lord is your strength" (Nehemiah 8:10).

If you have allowed the devil to steal the joy of the Lord from you, then you will feel weak and powerless. But when the joy of the Lord returns, you will be strong! If you feel defeated, then "strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, 'Be strong, do not fear; your God will come'" (Isaiah 35:3–4). It is in the very nature of our God to help the oppressed (see Psalm 146:7–8).

From Living Water

by Brother Yun

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Living in the Shadow of Death

In the concentration camp I lived near a crematorium for months. I was living in the shadow of death. I did not know beforehand that they would release me a week before they would kill all the women my age. It was a human error and a miracle of God.

When you face eternity, and that was what was happening to me, you see everything so clearly. Here I was weak and sinful, and there was the Devil, much stronger than me, much, much stronger than me. But there was Jesus, much, much stronger than the Devil. And together with Him, I was more than a conqueror.

From I Stand at the Door and Knock: Meditations by the Author of The Hiding Place 

by Corrie Ten Boom

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Joy in the Darkness

During the years I spent in prison, I had many times when I felt weak, but it was never too long before the Holy Spirit encouraged me and caused me to sing praises to Jesus. My favorite song was "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Praise Him in the morning. Praise Him in the evening. I will always praise Him!"

Prison was such a dark and depressing place that my sincere joy and positive attitude caught the attention of other prisoners. They knew there was something in me that allowed me to rise above the circumstances, and they wanted to know what it was. This opened countless doors of opportunity to share the gospel, and many of my fellow inmates, as well as guards, were saved by the grace of God.

From Living Water

by Brother Yun

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sobering

If you can still imagine yourself as a prisoner, think about what the scene at Golgotha reveals. Being nailed to a cross was an invention of the Romans, considered the most painful death imaginable, with prolonged suffering often lasting hours. None of us can get out of our minds the grisly portrayal of the crucifixion in Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. Watching that film was one of the most sobering and convicting experiences of my life. Prisoners can really relate when they realize that Jesus went through that horrific experience for them, as He endured it for all of us. I see the truth register in their expressions: Jesus suffered like this just for me? Yes.

From The Faith: What Christians Believe, Why They Believe It, and
Why It Matters

by Charles Colson and Harold Fickett

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