When God's People Cause Your Pain...

Have you ever been hurt by your own teammate?  The wounds from a friend hurt deeper than the wounds of an adversary.

A good friend of mine who happens to be a Navy Chaplain sent me this email the other day.  And it came just at the right time.  I hope this brings you the comfort and movitvation to press into God in the midst of your hurt.

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Good Morning,

Now I am no Billy Graham but I do resonate with how he explained how he felt intense humility and meekness as well as feeling inadequate for the task. Every time I preach or publicly speak I am nervous. Not for what people will think of me but by the seriousness of the task before me.

I remember being out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on the USS SHILOH, all by myself, topside, alone before God and nothing in sight. The smallness of me and the greatness of God was so impressed on me that I wept. Every day the enemy tries to remind me that I am inadequate and a failure. He is the accuser of the brethren and loves to beat us up.

Strangely it is God's people who have wounded me the most. That is very difficult for me to process, yet it teaches me that none on this side of heaven are complete in the sanctification process - so I remember and try to be gracious for I am one of those in process as well. We all are in process. We who have been adopted into God's family are family together.

Now Go! Love deeply, forgive deeply, Be, yes, be all who God has called us to be.

B BLESSED 4 U R!

In process as well, Your beloved brother in Christ

Now Go!

April 23, 2015

Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say. —Exodus 4:12 (niv)

More than 10,000 evangelists and Christian leaders sat in a giant auditorium in Amsterdam in 1986 listening to world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham. I sat among them, listening as he narrated some of his experiences. Then, to my surprise, he said, “Let me tell you: every time I stand before the congregation of God’s people to preach, I tremble and my knees wobble!”

What! I wondered. How can such a great preacher who has enthralled millions with his powerful sermons exhibit trembling and wobbling knees? Then he went on to describe not fear and stage fright, but intense humility and meekness as he felt inadequate for the daunting task to which God had called him. He relied on God for strength, not on his own eloquence.

Moses felt inadequate when God sent him to deliver the enslaved Israelites from their 400-year captivity in Egypt. Moses pleaded with the Lord to send someone else, with the excuse that he had never been a good speaker (see Ex. 4:10,13).

We may have similar fears when God calls us to do something for Him. But His encouragement to Moses can also spur us on: “Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say” (v.12 niv).

As Billy Graham said that day, “When God calls you, do not be afraid of trembling and wobbling knees, for He will be with you!”

What task does God have for you to do today? Depend on Him by asking for His help.

Wherever God sends us, He comes alongside us.

INSIGHT: When God called Moses to deliver His people from Egyptian bondage, Moses was reluctant to obey, giving various reasons why he was not qualified. He questioned his own identity and worthiness (3:11), his lack of authority (3:13), his credibility and acceptability (4:1), and his incapacities (v.10). Although God answered each of Moses’s excuses, God was angry with Moses for resisting what He had asked him to do (v. 14).

By Lawrence Darmani