trust God in life and in death

"However dark death seems, it is fleeting and transient, a mere breath before the eternal life to come." 
If God Doesn’t Heal You | Desiring God 

Kathryn Butler is a trauma and critical care surgeon who recently left clinical practice in Boston to homeschool her children. Her book on end-of-life medical care through a Christian lens is anticipated in 2019 (Crossway). She writes at Oceans Rise. 

trust God in suffering

"What would I tell my thirty-year-old self?

Trust God. He is going to use everything in your life to draw you closer to him. Don’t waste your suffering, for it will be the making of your faith. And one day, as your faith becomes sight, you will be grateful for it all." 

Weakness and Failure Will Build Your Faith | Desiring God

Vaneetha Rendall Risner is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to Desiring God. She blogs at danceintherain.com, although she doesn’t like rain and has no sense of rhythm. Vaneetha is married to Joel and has two daughters, Katie and Kristi. She and Joel live in Raleigh, North Carolina. Vaneetha is the author of the book The Scars That Have Shaped Me: How God Meets Us in Suffering. 

thank God

"...As I walked out of the dim-lit, air-conditioned coffee shop into the bracing warmth of a summer afternoon, the words became real: God’s pleasure rang out in birds chirping, leaves whispering, dust motes soaring, cattails swaying. Earth and sky resounded in a chorus of praise to the God of glory, and for the first time in a long time, I heard the music.

Joy swelled my lungs and broke out in spontaneous laughter. My inward gaze exploded outward to find a universe of marvels. My discontentment fled the scene like a thief at daybreak. I discovered, in other words, a lost weapon in the fight for happiness and contentment: wonder.

... we can get outside. Memorize one of the psalms about creation (psalms 8, 19, 104), and then carry on the song yourself. Perhaps join Clyde Kilby in the first of his ten resolutions for mental health: 'At least once a day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

...we can give thanks. 'Give thanks always and for everything,' Paul tells us (Ephesians 5:20). 'Everything' includes the forgiveness of sins as well as flannel bed sheets, the hope of heaven as well as second helpings. As you pray, give at least some time to thanking God for his created gifts and how they speak to you of him. Thank him that he provides you so richly with everything to enjoy." - https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/grumbling-in-paradise 

faith + trust = contentment today

faith + trust = peace+joy+love+happiness                            with God forever in heaven 

journey

with

Jesus
as my foundation, I build

faith

trust

contentment

that I will reach

peace

joy
love

happiness

with

God

forever in

heaven

Lamb of God

"Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." John 1:29

image by MAGISTER SACRORUM IULIANUS 

File:AGNUS DEI.jpg - Wikimedia Commons 

Before You Believed, You Belonged

Before You Believed, You Belonged | Desiring God 

a colossal waste of time

How Have Catholics Changed Since Luther? | Desiring God 

what a colossal waste of time! theologians (in the generic sense) debate differences in Christian churches while their members search for God--to know God, to love God and to serve God in a world that largely doesn't know God. 

get with the program! 
- Tim Tebow Shares Incredible Story of John 3:16 - YouTube 
- Put God First - Denzel Washington Motivational & Inspiring - Commencement Speech - YouTube 
- Accept Jesus & Be His Witness - Carson Wentz Inspirational & Motivational Video - YouTube

https://www.desiringgod.org/
image by Micah Chiang
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Photo_of_John_Piper,_Oct_2010_(cropped).jpg 

God laughs

The laughter of God is simultaneously horrible and wonderful — horrible for those who oppose him, and wonderful for those in his house, for his children, for his people, for those who hear in his laughter the greatest joys in all the world and echo back his contagious laughter in their own. 

For now, his enemies may chuckle with the laughter of unbelief, as they did at Jesus (Matthew 9:24; Mark 5:40; Luke 8:53), but we, like the excellent wife of Proverbs 31:25, “laugh at the time to come,” and in doing so communicate our confidence in God to handle our greatest possible troubles. 

Like Abraham and Sarah, we are on a spiritual journey from the laughter of unbelief (Genesis 17:17; 18:12–15) to the laughter of faith (Genesis 21:1–7), knowing we will not experience the fullness of God’s own laughter in us in this age of sin and pain (Luke 6:25). For now, we don’t only laugh. Often our laughter turns to mourning (James 4:9). “Even in laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief” (Proverbs 14:13). But unhindered, unending laughter will be our experience to come. Jesus says, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh” (Luke 6:21). For now, there is “a time to laugh” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). One day, we will laugh forever, and like never before. 

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/god-laughs-out-loud-to-quiet-our-fears

"My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?"

"Jesus Was Forsaken

We know Psalm 22:1. Its first sentence is among the most famous in the Bible. For Jesus screamed them out while in unfathomable agony on the cross: Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? (Matthew 27:46).

Stop and think over this sentence. Delve into it as deep as you can. You will never get to the bottom of it.

There was a moment, at the crux of history, when God was God-forsaken. To we who are not God, and who are only able to experience a few dimensions of reality, this is mysterious. But it was not a mystery; it was horrifyingly real. God the Son, the eternal delight of the Father, the radiance of the Father’s glory, the exact imprint of the Father’s nature, and the Father’s earthly visible image (Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:15) became in that incomprehensively dark moment unholy sin — our unholy sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). And while that moment lasted, the holy Father and the Holy Spirit could not abide the holy Son made unholy. God became the object of God’s wrath. A terrible, once-for-all-time fissure rent open between the Father and Son.

For Jesus, it was a truly hellish moment, which is why, in the words of R.C. Sproul, Jesus’s Psalm 22:1 scream “was the scream of the damned. For us.” Out of a love for us we have hardly begun to fathom, he took upon himself our damnable curse, becoming the propitiation for our sins (Galatians 3:13; 1 John 4:10). And he did it for us so that our curse would be eternally removed and we might become the objects of God’s eternal mercy, clothed forever with the holiness and righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).


Psalm 22 does far more than give us words to pray during our seasons of spiritual desolation. It gives us words to grasp the desolation God the Son experienced to purchase our peace and restoration." - https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/he-will-restore-your-soul