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Why Must We Suffer

May 20, 2011
Filed In Daily Devotionals

Suffering is something we all want to avoid.  None of us invite pain.  We tend to seek comfort and pleasure; it’s the way we are.  We rebel against discomfort.  We have innate defenses against that which hurts us or can bring harm.  We buy things to eliminate pain.  We invent things, we construct things, we work for things, we purchase things to bring us more comfort, more ease, more time to spend at ease.  So when we face a season of suffering, our first reaction is to fix the situation–not accept it.  We question why?  Quite often, if we sit awhile and consider our discomfort–we can see our suffering is far, far less in comparison to another’s.

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” 1 Peter 1:6-7

We have conditioned ourselves to believe we should not suffer, be inconvenienced, or deal with pain.  Yet, the Apostle Peter tells us to look beyond the temporary “grief in all kinds of trials”.  They come to prove the ”genuineness” of our faith.  Anyone can suffer and whine.  It takes a person full of faith, and a hope beyond the temporary difficulties of life, to bring glory and honor to God.  Such is our joy.  Our endurance through the suffering, our steadfast faith in God amid the trials–these bring refinement which results in praise and honor and glory.

Does this mean we should keep our suffering to ourselves–stay silent when heartache, discouragements, and grief press upon us?  I don’t think so.  I think when we suffer we have a great opportunity to show the grace of God.  We may hurt.  We may mourn.  But we show the greatest honor to God as we stand firm in our faith in the midst of our suffering.  It’s not easy.  It’s not easy to smile…to laugh, or sing.  Our Lord knows that.  He suffered the cross to bring glory to the Father.  He suffered alone.  He does not want us to suffer alone.  He left His Spirit to comfort us.  He gives us one another to help carry our load.  Knowing this, may we each find our voice to sing praises to Him for the victory He has set before us.

PRAYER:  LORD, gives us voices to raise in praise to You in times we find most unbearable.  Keep us ever close to You as we go through trials meant to strengthen our faith, and bring light of Your goodness to a lost world.  We can all praise You on the brighter days, LORD.  Give us Your Light to shine on those days which seem darkest before the dawn.

© Hariette Petersen, SelahV Today, 2011

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If God Made It, then…

April 25, 2011
Filed In Daily Devotionals

why don’t I rejoice in the day?  Why is my soul cast down?  Why do I let adversity beat me?  What reason do I have to rejoice when life treats me unfairly, when day after day circumstance doesn’t change?  Why do I grumble, have pity parties, murmur, criticize and condemn those things which cause discomfort?  After all…

“This is the day the LORD has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24

It’s not always easy to look at a day of trouble and rejoice.  It’s hard to watch a child suffer, a mother grieve, a widow cry, an elderly person lose all semblance of dignity.  It’s difficult to sing a song of harmonious joy when the piano needs tuning, the house burns down, the struggle with sin is lost.  However…

that is not the point in rejoicing and being glad.  The point is not the circumstances which surround us.  It’s not the heartache we are enduring.  It’s not the sadness we feel, nor the grief we bear.  It’s the fact that life is precious…that God is great…that no matter how bad things get, the LORD is still making days.  He is still creating air to breathe, bees to pollinate, seeds to die and give birth to new life to feed us again and again.

So often we tend to look at the darkest part of every cloud.  We fail to remember that God is in charge.  He knows what He is doing.  He cares more about us than we care about ourselves.  He knows what it takes to bring us closer to Him, to depend upon Him, to find the perfect peace that passes all understanding.  He knows our every thought and every motive.  He knows the desires of our hearts–the true desires.  He knows how much we can endure.

When we rejoice in a day the LORD makes, it doesn’t mean we are rejoicing and glad for the negative, troubling things we face.  However, even James tells us to “count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”  James 1:2-4

God in His infinite wisdom is working all things together according to His purpose and glory.  As we rejoice in the circumstance, the chains of temporal pain are loosed.  The storms of unsettled thoughts are stilled.  The agony of bitterness is forgiven.  The irritation of being wronged dissolves.  Then, my friends, then we will be glad in it.  The abandonment we feel is replaced with the presence of God’s love and comfort.  We begin to trust Him all the more…our faith grows…and God gets the glory for the day He has made.  What a glorious thing to consider.

Will you give God His due praise and adoration today?  Will you thank Him for the situation and trust His plan to use it for His unimaginable, incomprehensible, infinite, eternal purpose?

© Hariette Petersen, SelahV Today, 2011

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What is Faith?

April 20, 2011
Filed In Daily Devotionals

“1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” -Hebrews 11:1

Just after the new year my mom called me and you could tell in her voice that she hadn’t had the best day. She was saddened because after she finished work that afternoon she noticed that a little something was missing from her wedding ring. A little something as in the diamond.

A week or two ago I got a phone call from my mom and she sounded happier than I had heard in a long time. She said she had to tell me about something she found. She said she had been reading a book and was really moved by it and then in church that next day the sermon was about the same type of thing the book was talking about. She said she prayed like she had never prayed before and then on the way to work the next morning was praying again to God. Praying that God would show in her life that He still works in our lives. That afternoon she was cleaning the shelves off at work and while cleaning the bottom shelf something shiny in the carpet caught her eye. Yep! It was her diamond…3 months later…the day after she prayed.

Reading through Hebrews 11 we are told what faith is by the author of Hebrews. To me…faith is…Finding a diamond that you gave up hope of ever finding. Faith is an unexpected bonus check from your employer that without wouldn’t have been possible to pay your federal taxes.  Faith is standing on a beach and feeling the warm sand between your toes and watching the sunset and knowing that the same God that created the sand, the ocean, the sun…also created and loves us.  Faith is moving 1,000 miles away from your family, your friends and everything you know as normal for an opportunity and after 2 years finally knowing why you’re supposed to be there. Faith is a couple of 8th grade girls listening to God and using their talents to sew birds out of fabric and raise over $11,000 for clean water in Zambia.

Read Hebrews 11 and watch the video below…and have faith that no matter where you’re at…God can do amazing things.

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An Empathizing God

April 17, 2011
Filed In Daily Devotionals

14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” -Hebrews 4:14-16

I work full-time in student ministry and one  the most commonly heard phrases in the lives of our students is “You just don’t understand!” Students feel like adults, specifically their parents, just don’t understand them, their friends or their culture.  Often times they’re not too far off because it has been a few years since I was in school and it has been a few decades for most of their parents.

Sometimes we feel the same way with  God. We face a temptation or we face the inability to have faith over a certain situation or circumstance and if we are brave enough we put words to our thoughts and cry out “You don’t understand.” But the reality is….He does.

Jesus faced temptation just like us. Jesus was put in situations where He had to have faith in His Father. So although we sometimes try to claim that He doesn’t understand…He does.

Because we serve a God that can empathize with us, we can accept the grace He offers. We can cry out to Him when we struggle and fall in His arms for comfort, because He understands. He understands how hard it is to have faith that things are going to work out when you find yourself in the middle of a difficult situation. He understands what you feel like when you face temptation.

So cry out to Him..the Great Empathizer.

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The Weight and Wait of Love

April 12, 2011
Filed In Daily Devotionals

Ever feel weighted down by the heartache of others? Marriage problems. Betrayals. Various trials and persecutions. False accusations. You counsel, advise and share the discernment the Lord has given you. You struggle to right a wrong; you wear your knees out praying for wisdom. Your mind spins with words to say and logic to impart to help. Yet, your heart is heavier than when you began praying.

I have learned the hard way that the more I try to help God, the more stuff starts piling on. In other words, I cannot do what God wants to do. When I try, He shows me the futility of trying to do things in my own power. He lets me exhaust myself and my ideas.

We can really only make decisions for ourselves. Others must make their own. After sharing all we know to share, and praying as He leads, we really do need to say, “Thy will be done, Lord,” and mean what we say.

Do you have loved ones going through trying circumstances? Divorce.  Job loss.  Financial struggles. Do you talk till you run out of words to share and find all your conversations running in circles? You wonder, did I say the wrong thing? did I forget to say something right? Do you pray and get impatient that God does not intervene as you think He should?

What keeps us from trusting God? Independence. The I-can-do-it-myself syndrome.

We can’t trust God when we’re depending upon ourselves. Some situations in life are far beyond our ability to fix. A problem we see that needs our intervention, may be God’s cocoon of struggle to strengthen. Seriously. Can we love our loved ones more than God does? We must think we do or we’d be willing and able to accept God’s timetable. We’d relax and stop trying to fix what He will take care of. Unless it is a direct leading from Him, our job is simply to be available to undergird, to be a leaning post, an intercessor of prayer, or an encourager to look to Him Who knows the perfect answer and to point others to Him. It’s up to others to deal with their decisions, their choices, and their consequences. To have peace in our lives we must let go and let God work in everyone’s life as He sees fit. When we let go of the weight of love, the Lord blesses us with the peace and grace of His.

“My times are in Thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.” Psalm 31:15 ESV

PRAYER: Lord, forgive us when we try to get ahead of You. Help us understand when to act and when to pray. Help us help others learn to wait on You and Your timetable.

 © Hariette Petersen, SelahV Today, 2011

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Is Hell Really Real?

March 30, 2011
Filed In Daily Devotionals

Is Heaven?  Many people believe in heaven, but not hell.

Many folks don’t want to believe the alternative to Heaven is hell.  They refuse to accept that people will actually end up in an eternal furnace of torture.

Athiests say we’re born, we live, we die, and rot.  End of story.  Agnostics aren’t all that sure; prove it to them.  Various religions believe in hell but have varying ways in which to escape it following death.  Some say you can “baptize a proxy”, to get them out.  Others think you can pray them out.  Others believe when you die, God will put your sins on one side of a scale and if your good deeds weigh more than your sins, then you get to come on into the place with no more sorrow, no more pain, no more night.  You get to live eternally with the Most High and Holy God.

To be honest, the urgency with which most Christians share the Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free card, you’d think they believe that, too.  However, the Bible speaks emphatically about a real place, an eternal furnace, an eternal punishment.  I don’t like it.  I don’t like the idea that someone can be as kind or kinder than me in life and because they refuse to accept the gift of God’s grace through Jesus, that they will end up separated from God forever.  I don’t like that Lucifer took all the beauty, glory, and God-created brilliance he possessed and decided to elevate Himself above God, either.  He misused every single portion of his being to reject God and lead others to do likewise. 

Few folks have any problem with Satan ending up chained to the burning abyss, unable to exact harm upon creation anymore.  They can see the justice in Satan going to hell for his rebellion against God…for his rejection The Great I AM, Jehovah.  They even accept that all his demons belong right there next to him for causing such havoc and chaos in the world.

But it’s hard, for some, impossible, to wrap their minds around the idea that a person, created in God’s image, could possibly end up in Satan’s lap for all eternity.  Yet, Jesus says that is exactly what is going to happen when He returns and separates the goats from the sheep.  The tares from the wheat.  The unrighteous from the righteous.  The ones with lights in their oil lamps from those without light.

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Matthew 25:41

If you don’t want to believe it; it doesn’t change anything.  It is what it is, and will be what God says, anyway.  The Lord would have all men to come to His saving grace.  He wants that so much He literally came to earth to show us Himself, to live among us and show us how to talk to Him, how to live as He lived.  He came to die and become the perfect and holy sacrifice to attone for our sins.  He took our sin upon Himself so we wouldn’t have to spend an eternity with Satan who rejects God, who refuses to bow to God’s authority.  God doesn’t want a single soul to spend a second away from Himself.  He loved us before we first loved Him.  He longs for us to come to Him.

Since He before we were created, He wanted us to know Him in all His fullness and glory.  Just like you long for others to know you and love you and be part of your life, God wants that, too.  He wants to give us all He has and the glory on this earth and more.  The happiness we get, the comfort, the joy is nothing–nothing compared to what He has prepared for those of us who trust and believe. 

LORD, lay some soul upon our hearts, and let us share today.

© Hariette Petersen, SelahV Today, 2011

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What Is The World Coming To?

March 25, 2011
Filed In Daily Devotionals

People wonder.

In light of the recent crop of wars popping up in the Middle-East nations, people wonder.

With the speculations of Apocalypse, Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, people wonder.

Yesterday, I read about the burning of 69 churches in Ethiopia, 30 Christian homes, a Christian orphanage, a Christian office building, and more.  Blatant sin is touted as okay by NFL greats, million-dollar actors, and yes, everyday average people.  Christians succumb to sexual immorality.  Society accepts and tolerates more and more sin as the new norm: “addiction”.

Indeed…what IS the world coming to?  That was a question posed on a friend’s Facebook status wall tonight.  I was first out of the gate to answer:  “An End.”

Others chimed in with similar gloom and doom.   One recalled a childhood saying: ”to hell in a handbasket, whatever that means.”

The forthcoming reply:  Handbaskets were for picnics.  So it means that it’s going to hell and no one cares.”

Then there was the clarion shout, “Come, Lord Jesus, come.”

Longings.  Sighs.  “I’m ready.”

Finally, a self-described “contrarian” voice of profundity admonished:

“…It’s coming to a glorious rebirth! I’ve never quite understood why we Christians allow the temporal brokenness and sinfulness of the present order to overshadow the promise of all things made new.” Paul Littleton

A pin dropped and I heard it.  Pow!  Thud!  What is the world coming to?  Rebirth.  A new Jerusalem.  Peace.  Goodness and Glory.  Majesty!  A kaleidoscope of colorful beauty!  Wonder of wonders!

Praise when the voice is weakest.

“And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.” Revelation 21:2

Hope when the world is blackest. 

“Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.” Revelation 21:5

What is the world coming to?  A new dawning.  A glorious new day.

Prayer:  Oh, Lord, whatever the world does, we know those who trust in You will see a new earth filled with your glory and majesty.  As the world rebels against your will and way, and false prophets rise up to confuse and lead others astray, we know You will not abandon the children who stand firm in their faith in You.  We praise You, exalt You, and rest in You, oh Lord our King and Redeemer.

© Hariette Petersen, SelahV Today, 2011

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Consider This

March 9, 2011
Filed In Daily Devotionals

Are you worried?  Are you anxious?  Does your world seem uncertain?  Are your bills mounting?  Your health failing?  Your hope waning?  Consider the words of Jesus in Matthew, chapter six:

“And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of his life? And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Matthew 6:27-29

If we are to consider the lilies and how they grow–they do not toil, but merely show God’s glory–why do we fret and balk at the field in which He’s planted us?

Lilies do not struggle, or beg for water.  They do not whine and cry when Oklahoma winds blow thorny thistles against their stems.  They do not envy the stately redwoods grown in California.  They do not covet the flourishing dandelion, or seasonal blue-bonnets dressing Texas meadows.  They do not question their Creator who lets them rest each winter and numbers their days in the sun.

Why do we?  Why do we waste time and energy trying to be what we aren’t meant to be?  Why do we demand our way, and ask for a more fertile field, one without tares or stones?  Why can we not bloom where we are planted and be what God has created us to be: a manifestation of His glory, love, and mercy right where we are? Why are we so selfish and dissatisfied with our lot in life? Why are we so fearful of our future?

“….your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:32b-34.

PRAYER:  Oh Lord give me greater joy in simply knowing You.  Let my joy in You so permeate my being that I stand tall and drink deeply from Your well of sufficiency.  Let my hope be so strong in You that I bend and never break when winds of difficulty come my way.  Let me remember the Root of my salvation when I am tempted to question my plight or temporary circumstance.  In all the days of my life, let me bring to You the glory due Your name.  Let me be ever grateful for the blessing You’ve given me to live in the wheat-fields of Your kingdom.

© Hariette Petersen, SelahV Today, 2011

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