joy in facing more spiritual challenges

God sure must have great things in store for me because He keeps blessing me with more and more emotional hardship. The stronger I become, the more challenges I face, within myself and in relationships. It just never seems to end. And when sickness comes along with all its lessons, the challenges grow ever greater. If I did not love and trust my Saviour so, I would give up, and throw in the towel, and say it is not worth going through all this pain, again and again. But I trust my Lord is faithful, and He knows what He is doing, and He is trying to teach me "how to bear the beams of love" with greater humility, awareness, and grace. His grace. These are the main lessons for this past week, written for my regular Saturday blog post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com.

Daily Bread for the Three D's

We can only cruise so long before the crash comes, if we don't take care of ourselves. It's usually my mother heart that does that to me, and as we have seen in my last two blog posts, God has blessed me in my journeys on behalf of my daughter's goals. But still my body has had the bigger say over my heart. I have a cold I can't shake easily and it is so frustrating. Whatever is bothering me bothers me even more, whatever is hard is extra hard, and so I could go on. It is easy to go into the darkness when you are sick, and frustrated. The three D's come up trumps if I don't defeat them: Doubt, Discouragement and Despair.

As I have listened to my heart this week and observed my moods closely, I have realized with horror how easily I could give up on my dreams and God's promises. I am grateful for these words that jumped off the page from Streams in the Desert on April 30th, in the midst of my darkness:

And the ill-favoured and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well favored and fat kine...and the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears. (Gen.: 41: 4,7)

I was amazed and arrested at the following interpretation of this passage:

There is a warning for us in that dream, just as it stands: It is possible for the best years of our life, the best experiences, the best victories won, the best service rendered, to be swallowed up by times of failure, defeat, dishonor, uselessness in the kingdom. Some men's lives of rare promise and rare achievement have ended so. It is awful to think of, but it is true. Yet it is never necessary.

S.D. Gordon has said that the only assurance of safety against this tragedy is "fresh touch with God", daily, hourly. The blessed, fruitful, victorious experiences of yesterday are not only of no value to me today, but they will actually be eaten up or reversed by today's failures, unless they serve as incentives to still better, richer experiences today.

"Fresh touch with God," by abiding in Christ, alone will keep the lean kine and the ill-favored grain out of my life.

From Messages for the Morning Watch