Believer, did you awake this morning with the weight of everyone under your influence on your shoulders?\u00a0 What a heavy load to bear: sick loved ones, erring loved ones, lost loved ones, along with all your own trouble and heartache, sin and sorrow?\u00a0 Perhaps the thought has crossed your mind, \u201cHow did it all come to this?\u201d Thus saith the Lord your God, \u201cRejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.\u201d<\/p>\n
A child of God can rejoice in the midst of our greatest suffering because, though the pain is pain and the sorrow is sorrow, we have Christ our Redeemer and are washed in his precious blood.\u00a0 Accepted of God\u2014what a reason to rejoice evermore!\u00a0 And God instructs us to pray without ceasing.\u00a0 Is this not the reason we suffer?\u00a0 It is to draw us to the giver of all grace to ask for grace to help in time of need. (Heb 4: 16)\u00a0 Christ knows exactly what we suffer\u2014he has suffered it and knows the feeling of the infirmities of each of his blood-bought children.\u00a0 As we pray, our great God reminds us, in everything to give thanks.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 For this\u2014this very suffering you suffer at this present moment\u2014is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.\u00a0 Oh, how this helps to ease the pain of our suffering.\u00a0 If my Father, my faithful Father, my sovereign Father, my loving Father, my ever-present Father is ruling over all of this then it is for my good.\u00a0 Anything that brings us to look away from ourselves and cast all our care into Christ\u2019s hands is for our good.\u00a0 Therefore, we thank God for it. May God help you now to see that this is not to make light of your suffering but it is to comfort you that this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
\nClay Curtis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Believer, did you awake this morning with the weight of everyone under your influence on your shoulders?\u00a0 What a heavy load to bear: sick loved ones, erring loved ones, lost loved ones, along with all your own trouble and heartache, sin and sorrow?\u00a0 Perhaps the thought has crossed your mind, \u201cHow did it all come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-clay-curtis","category-perseverence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4279,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4278\/revisions\/4279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}