God's Wisdom in Hard Trials

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Jas 1:2–3 NIV

How can you find joy in very hard situations? When God deals with your situation, you will be happy about it. It is a challenge to be happy in advance, very hard.

Corrie Ten Boom was in Ravensbrück concentration camp with her sister Betsie because they had spared Jews in Holland.

It was terribly cold in winter and they were hungry. They were also itchy because of all the bedbugs.

They hated the bedbugs, but they wanted to obey God. They read in the Bible that they must be thankful in all circumstances.

Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. 1 Th 5:18 NLT

They forced themselves to thank God for the bedbugs. Then they realised that the cruel guards usually didn't bother them in the dormitory because they also hated the bedbugs.

In difficult trials, God wants to help us to gain new insights, but this is often not easy. We must often resist our tendency to fear and bitterness.

In the Middle East, many Muslims are converting to Jesus. For hardcore Muslims, this is a terrible crime that deserves the death penalty.

There were some ex-Muslims in prison because of their conversion to Jesus, where they were brutally beaten daily.

After a few months they realised that they had not forgiven their tormentors. They must simply forgive, but it was very difficult. They resolved to forgive as Jesus did on the cross.

When they then began to pray for their tormentors with new hearts, a miracle happened. They were freed from prison.

Are you being bullied in your family? Or at work, or in your church?

How can you pray? You need wisdom from God.

Is your boss cruel? Should you stay and learn patience, or look for another job?

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. Jas 1:5 NIV

Wisdom from God in the End Times

 The stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’
“At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. Mk 13:25–26 NIV

Do you understand this prediction of Jesus that the stars of heaven will fall? Neither do I, but if we only believe in what we can understand, then we no longer believe in God, whose wisdom is much higher than our limited understanding.

Jesus says that he will come back from heaven bodily and visibly. If we don't want to believe this because it seems too strange, then we limit ourselves to our small human minds.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Is 55:8–9 NIV

In this time of crisis, many Christians want to hold on to familiar, conventional Bible teachings. We must not abandon our biblical faith, but when our conventional theology is inadequate to explain current events, we need to seek God's wisdom in the Bible.

It will not help if we only look to the Bible for confirmation of our favourite conspiracy theories, or if we only study with our human minds. Only the Holy Spirit can be a reliable guide in confusing times.

Will Jesus come again? He has promised so many times. But do you understand how, where and when he will appear?

We must seek wisdom from God and trust God Himself in our uncertainty.

God Can Rescue You

 How can Jesus save you from your troubles? You don't know. But with God, nothing is impossible. He has a plan for you.  

They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff.

But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Lk 4:29–30 NIV

How did Jesus escape the angry crowd? A mystery.

How can Jesus save you from your misery? You don't know. It's a mystery, but He can.

How did the Holy Spirit plant the holy seed in Mary's womb so that she became pregnant and Jesus was born nine months later?

It's a mystery, but with God nothing is impossible.

Gaby Wentland is a preacher in Hamburg who was once a missionary in Africa. She now has a different mission in Germany. She helps asylum seekers and enslaved prostitutes.

She says there is more prayer in brothels than in most churches.

A German evangelist heard God's still small voice whispering in his spirit. He was told to go to a brothel. He was shocked, but he wanted to obey.

In the brothel he found a decent woman from a distant country who had been enticed to come to Germany to find work to help her poor family.

The evangelist was able to help her escape from the brothel and return to her family.

God has ways of helping His children. Don't you see a way out? God has good plans for you.

He is waiting for your cry for help. Right now.

‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’ Jer 33:3 NIV

Your Time Will Come

Have you been a believer for a long time? Do you read the wonderful promises of fruitfulness in the Bible? Are you fulfilled and satisfied, or is your Christian life just a religious routine?

Maybe you have already broken out of the religious routine, but you can't see any fruit. You love God and you have a close friendship with Jesus.

You want to win disciples for Jesus. You want to lay hands on the sick and see miraculous healings. Maybe you love Jesus, but you haven't received a miracle healing yet, even though you desperately need healing.

You love God and your trust in God is real and strong, but your hoped-for miracles are not appearing. And you need these miracles because you are disabled by illness, because your relatives are not yet believers, because you must wrestle with financial problems.

In the Gospel of Luke, we find an elderly woman who served God with a faithful heart for decades. She had prayed for children since her marriage, but she never had a single baby. Yet she never became bitter.

Had God abandoned her? Not at all. God had a marvellous plan. She was to experience a miracle, but without the long years of disappointment, God could not bring about this miracle.

Her husband Zechariah was a priest serving in the temple when an angel of the Lord appeared and shared an amazing message.

But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. Lk 1:13 NIV

Elizabeth was to be the mother of John the Baptist, the great prophet who would announce the coming of God's Son.

Everywhere in this chaotic world there are faithful disciples of the Lord who are waiting for the second coming of Jesus. Some are well-known prophets, good pastors, or well-known evangelists, but there are also many unknown saints who are frustrated because their prayers seem to be unanswered.

Are you one of them? Take courage. God has not forgotten you. God has prepared a spiritual army that He will release in the great end-time revival. Hold on to your hope. Your time is coming.

I prayed for years and God healed my depression.
I prayed for years and God saved my parents on their deathbed.
I prayed for years and .... I am not disappointed.

“Sing, barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labour; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the LORD. Is 54:1 NIV

God's Mysteries

 Are you a child of God? Are you a beloved son or daughter of the great Creator?
Or are you a lost orphan in a confusing world? Are you not sure where you will end up after you die?

God has a secret that he wants to share with you. It is well known and by no means hidden, but it is a secret because it is only revealed to those who want to love God with childlike trust.

However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him—

these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 1 Cor 2:9–10 NIV

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Jn 3:16 NIV

If you respond to the sacrificial death of the Son of God is given a whole new spiritual life, with the ability to perceive and receive the spiritual gifts of God.

Does this world need saving? Environmental activists warn us that our planet is perishing. We are like children who soil our own bed.

God will restore this planet in the end.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. Rev 21:1 NIV

But God doesn't just want to restore his creation. He has a plan to save you and me, to give us an imperishable future.

“Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. Jn 5:24 NIV

The key to God's new world is faith, but what is faith?

You may have been taught Biblical doctrines as a child, but faith is not just agreeing with facts. It is personally trusting in God and experiencing God’s presence in your life.

Father God did not send his eternal Son into this world just to start a religion.

When Jesus was 30 years old, he began to proclaim the love of the heavenly Father, but not just to preach, but to save people from impossible problems.

And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. Acts 10:38 NLT

Yes, there is a devil. The cruel horrors in this world do not come from God. We have an enemy, an invisible enemy, who makes us sick, who wants to deceive us so that we blame God for our sickness.
But then sceptical thoughts arise. This is too radical, too extreme. It's too good to be true?

Where do these thoughts come from? Perhaps from the no longer Christian world, but perhaps from the religious Christian tradition, from a watered-down version of the gospel.

Are you perhaps not sure what to believe? Why don't you ask God himself? He is not deaf and not dumb.

“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Mt 7:7–8 NRSV

‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’ Jer 33:3 NIV

Your Calling and Mission

 Jesus came to purge you and me of our sins. What should our lives look like afterwards?

Jesus didn't just come to cleanse your life of offences so that you could continue your everyday life without dirty sins. God wants to use you to set other people free.

When the first people believed the devil's lies and rebelled against God's commandment, they gave their God-given dominion over this world into the hands of the enemy.

Jesus defeated the devil with his sinless life, his death on the cross and his resurrection from the realm of the dead.

Shortly before his return to the Father in heaven, he instructed his disciples to take back the lost world for God.

We find the final instructions to his disciples in four biblical passages.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Mt 28:19 NRSV

And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;
they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Mk 16:17–18 NRSV


But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 NIV

When we read these passages carefully, we see a heavenly calling to a dramatic mission, but the enemy has been misguiding us for centuries.

We have thought this mission was only for a few especially holy ordained preachers and missionaries.
We have thought that the dramatic spiritual gifts in Mark chapter 16 were only for a short time 2000 years ago.

But when we read all these passages together, we see that Jesus has called us to a supernatural mission ‘to the ends of the earth’. (Acts 1:8)

This mission is still a work in progress. You and I are called to play an important role. God is at work in your life.

Don't stay where you are. Let the Holy Spirit give you a new revelation of your heavenly destiny.  

Start seeking God's path for your life today. Do something new. How can you act differently today? Start small. Move forward step by step.

God Made You for Love

 You are made for love. How can we say this when we see so much hatred and cruelty around us?

Where does the love between mother and child come from? Why do we long for love when we don't know how to find it?

Our human tendency to love is often corrupted and twisted, but not destroyed.

Who is the source of true love? Only God, who invented motherly love.

But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.”
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! Is 49:14–15 NIV

Jesus often spoke about love.

He spoke of the limited love of natural, flawed human beings and the unlimited love of God.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’
But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Mt 5:43–45 NIV

Love is generous.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Mt 7:9–11 NIV

True love is always practical. He who does not want to give does not really love.

God is love. God's heart is open to you. He wants to help you and bless you with many good gifts.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. Jas 1:17 NIV

Do you not know God's personal love? You can come to know God today.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Jn 3:16 NIV