Ogunfowote

January 27, 2007

SAT 27 JAN 2007

Tranformed By Trouble By Ogunfowote

GOD has a purpose behind every problem. He uses circumstances to develop our character.

In fact, He depends more on circumstances to make us  like Jesus than He depends on our reading the Bible.

The reason is obvious: You face circumstances twenty-four hours a day.

Jesus warned us that we would have problems in the  world. No one is immune to pain or insulated from suffering, and no one gets to skate through life problem-free. Life is a series of problems.
Every time you solve one, another  is waiting to take its place. Not all of them are big, but all are significant in God's growth process for you.

God uses problems to draw you closer to Himself. Your most profound and intimate experience of worship will likely be in your darkest days, when your heart s broken, when you feel abandoned, when you're out of options, when the pain is great, and you turn to God alone.
It is during suffering that we learn to pray our most authentic, heartfelt, honest-to-God prayers. When we're in pains, we don't have the energy for superficial prayers.

Joni Eareckson Tada notes "When life is rosy, we may slide by with knowing about Jesus, when imitating Him and quoting Him and speaking of Him. But only in suffering will we know Jesus."
We learn things about God in suffering that we can't learn any other way.

God could have kept Joseph out of jail, kept Daniel out of the lion's den, kept Jeremiah from being tossed into a slimy pit, kept Paul from being shipwrecked three times, and kept the three Hebrew young men from being thrown into the blazing furnace - but He didn't.
He let those problems happen, and every one of those persons was drawn closer to Gos as a result.

Problems force us to look to God and depend on Him instead of ourselves.
You'll never know that God is all you need until God is all you've got

Regardless of the cause, none of your problems could happen without God's permission.
Everything that happens to a child of God is father-filtered, and He intends to use it for good even when Satan and others mean it for bad.

Because God is sovereignly in control, accidents are just incidents in God's good plan for you.
Because every day of your life was written on God's calendar before you were born, everything that happens to you has spiritual significance.

Cheer Up!


(Rick Warren)
adapted from SuccessDigest Extra)