John Chapter 11(Part 3)-A RESPONSE DELAYED BUT STILL LOVED

Lets continue our thoughts on John Chapter 11 (I added a subtitle to help me a bit).

John 11:3-6:  Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. 

If you got the news that a loved one was sick, what would be your reaction?

Now if you were like me, you would want to rush off to be at their side if you could, or call frantically to know how they were or at least send someone to know how they were doing. I'm I right?

So When I read that, Jesus was told that Lazarus, a person he Loved, was sick. I expected the same action but His response was different (You would have noticed). He remained two days more AT THE SAME PLACE.Now that's a strange way to react! 

If the Bible had not been clear that Jesus Loved Lazarus, I am sure a lot of people could have doubted his affection for Lazarus. 

Can I bring that thought closer to you?

When you are passing through a difficulty and there is a delay in the response of God to your prayers,  how do you perceive it? Do you still know that God loves you even if his response is delayed or do you doubt his love for you?A delayed response or a non-response can be discomforting to the best of us. Even Jesus asked his Father why he had been forsaken on the cross.A delayed response can cause us to question a lot of things. It could cause us to question our faith, or question the love that God has for us.

Some may have reasoned that the sister had the impression that Jesus loved Lazarus if only verse 3 was the only mention of this love. They would have argued that maybe Lazarus did not mean as much to Jesus as his sisters thought he did.

I am glad that the bible tells us clearly that their impression was right, Jesus did indeed love Lazarus and just so that people don't turn their attentions to knowing whether he had a problem with Martha and Mary instead the bible says, ..Jesus Loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

Not leaving any of them out.

Friend, I can tell you that God Loves you! 

Despite what you are faced with, despite the challenges that may confront you and despite the trails you may be going through. God the creator of the universe loves you.

Whatever happens do not doubt that for a second! Even though the response may be delayed he loves you more than you know.

Let me end this with this scripture, (Please think about it if you doubt the love of God).

John 3:16  For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.(Good news Bible)

To be continued....

EVER FELT LIKE ENDING IT ALL?......THEN YOU'RE IN GOOD COMPANY!(PART 2)

1Ki 19:9-10  There he went into a cave to spend the night. Suddenly the LORD spoke to him, "Elijah, what are you doing here?"  He answered, " LORD God Almighty, I have always served you---you alone. But the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, and killed all your prophets. I am the only one left---and they are trying to kill me!"

Two emotions that overwhelm a man or woman who is discouraged or depressed is a great sense of isolation and hopelessness.

It is true that when we get into trouble at times, people could leave us( you could read my post LEFT ALONE for more details of this) but I also find that in some cases, people when they get depressed or discouraged tend to avoid the company of people who could help them the most.

When they feel pity for themselves, they would run away from that friend who would get in their face, and tell them to quit their pity party and sometimes seek out the company of those who offer them an easy way out. They avoid the company of any one who would challenge them to come out of the state they find themselves or to confront the situation.

For instance a woman or man who wants to get a divorce, hates the one that tells him to fight for his marriage preferring the company of those that give her or him the support to quit the marriage. Those who confront us with our faults in an argument are easily shoved aside for those who would blindly support our point of view no matter what. Hence, these people give us the fuel we need to keep on in our error and not deal with it. 

If we fail to find such "yeah sayers" we may then turn into our shells and hide off.

You may be reading this and expecting to be pitied but just like God asked Elijah, I would like to know 'What are you doing here?!'

We always want to offer a shoulder to cry on to one who is depressed but sometimes God would want us to think about what we are doing. I ask again "what are you doing here?". Do you have a clear understanding of what you are doing or has your emotions distorted your understanding of the events?

Sometimes our self-pity comes from a wrong perception of the situation. Our emotions could keep us from seeing things clearly but if you have someone who is a bit removed from the events, He/She could point out where you got it wrong.

Some people have such great gifting and have been equipped by God to deal with the situation they are confronted with (just like Elijah was) but they choose to bury their heads in the sand or turn tail and run at the slightest sign of conflict. The challenge looks so much more than it actually is especially when we can no longer look at it through the eyes of faith. 

An example of this is the children of Israel when they were about to enter the promise land for the first time. Here is what they spies said:

Num 13:31-33  "We can't attack those people," the men who were with him said, "because they're too strong compared to us."So they put out this false report to the Israelis about the land that they had explored: "The land that we've explored is one that devours its inhabitants. All the people whom we observed were giants. We also saw the Nephilim, the descendants of Anak. Compared to the Nephilim, as we see things, we're like grasshoppers, and that's their opinion of us!" 

If I was there that day I would have loved to ask them some questions like:

1. How did you determine the strength of an opponent that you have not faced in battle? 
2.  If the Land devours its inhabitants like you say, why are there people still living in it? (we should gladly walk in and let them give us possession of the land then, No battle needed!) and also how come that the ground of this land provides these fruits that you brought back with you but still devours its inhabitants?
3. Why are they giants, if they live so terribly?
4. How were you able to know their opinion of you? Did they tell you or could you read their minds?

For a people whose land devours its inhabitants they sure did well to end up as giants to the extent that we look like grasshoppers before them, don't you think? Maybe we are the ones who aren't living in the best place here!

Anyway lets move on! 

While the option of Isolating ones self may seem a good idea, it could prolong the depression. We need the support and godly advise of people around us in the times of distress.

However, even though the company and support of people could help us in our distress, the greatest need that confronts us is our need for God, simply because, people no matter how loving or caring may be unable to help and sometimes may cause more harm than good (A typical example of this is Job's friends who added to his distress by their counsel and his wife who told him to curse God and die).

Friend, Don't give up yet. God knows what you can take long before you faced down that challenge.

I would like to say to you that if God brought you into it, then He can bring you through it.

I am learning that no matter what happens I can always turn to God. 

He is a very present help in the time of trouble, He gives power to the faint, and to them that have run out of strength, he increases their strength. 

I know prayer can be very tough when we are depressed but we can not afford not to. Turn to Him today, even if he rebukes you, He is also loving enough to rescue you. Your mistakes doesn't have to be the end.

God can turn  this for your good!

A Broken and Contrite Heart God Will Not Despise

Psalms: Thinking and Feeling with God, Part 3

http://www.desiringgod.org/sermons/a-broken-and-contrite-heart-god-will-not-despise

June 8, 2008

• by John Piper
 
• Scripture: Psalms 51
 
• Topic: Indwelling Sin
 
• Series: Psalms: Thinking and Feeling with God

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. “Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Last week we focused on Psalm 42 and how to be discouraged well. And today our focus is on Psalm 51 and how to be crushed with guilt well. I hope that you are detecting a pattern. What makes a person a Christian is not that he doesn’t get discouraged, and it’s not that he doesn’t sin and feel miserable about it. What makes a person a Christian is the connection that he has with Jesus Christ that shapes how he thinks and feels about his discouragement and his sin and guilt.

Crushed with Guilt Well

The Psalms were the main songbook of the early church, and they were designed by God to awaken and express and shape the thoughts and feelings of Jesus’ disciples. We learn from the Psalms how to think about discouragement and guilt, and we learn from the Psalms how to feel in times of discouragement and in times of horrible regret. The Psalms show us how to be discouraged well and how to regret well.

My prayer is that you will form the habit of living in the Psalms so much that the world of your thinking and the world of your feeling will be transformed into full-blooded biblical thinking and biblical feeling.

David’s Downward Spiral of Sin

Psalm 51 is one of the few psalms that are pinpointed as to their historical origin. The heading of the psalm goes like this: “To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” What happened with Bathsheba is well known. Here it is in crisp biblical words from 2 Samuel 11:2–5:

It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. . . . Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

He tried to cover his sin by bringing her husband Uriah home from battle so Uriah could lie with her and think it was his baby. Uriah was too noble to go in to his wife while his comrades were in battle. So David arranged to have him killed so that he could quickly marry Bathsheba and cover the sin that way.

In one of the most understated sentences of the Bible, 2 Samuel 11 ends with these words: “The thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:27). So God sent the prophet Nathan to David with a parable that entices David to pronounce his own condemnation. Then Nathan says, “You are the man!” and asks, “Why have you despised the word of the Lord?” David breaks and confesses, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Then Nathan says, astonishingly, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die” (2 Samuel 12:7–15).

“The Lord Has Put Away Your Sin”

This is outrageous. Uriah is dead. Bathsheba is raped. The baby will die. And Nathan says, “The Lord has put away your sin.” Just like that? David committed adultery. He ordered murder. He lied. He “despised the word of the Lord.” He “scorned God.” And the Lord “put away [his] sin” (2 Samuel 12:13). What kind of a righteous judge is God? You don’t just pass over rape and murder and lying. Righteous judges don’t do that. I was sharing the gospel with four guys on the street last week, and nothing I said could persuade them that a child molester could be forgiven.

I resonate with their skepticism. And I would be outraged at God’s behavior here—except for one thing. The apostle Paul shared my outrage and explained how God could be both righteous and the one who justifies murderers and rapists and liars and, yes, even child molesters.

God’s Outrageous “Passing Over”

Here is what Paul said in Romans 3:25–26. This is one of the most important sentences in the Bible for understanding how Christ relates to the Psalms—and to the Old Testament in general:

God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins [that’s exactly what 2 Samuel 12:13 says God did—he passed over David’s sin]. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

In other words, the outrage that we feel when God seems to simply pass over David’s sin would be good outrage if God were simply sweeping David’s sin under the rug. He is not. God sees from the time of David down the centuries to the death of his Son, Jesus Christ, who would die in David’s place, so that David’s faith in God’s mercy and God’s future redeeming work unites David with Christ. And in God’s all-knowing mind, David’s sins are counted as Christ’s sins and Christ’s righteousness is counted as his righteousness, and God justly passes over David’s sin. The death of the Son of God is outrageous enough, and the glory of God that it upholds is great enough, that God is vindicated in passing over David’s adultery and murder and lying.

Daily Appropriating Forgiveness

Now that is the objective reality of how David is forgiven for his sin and justified in the presence of God. But what Psalm 51 describes is what David felt andthought as he laid hold on God’s mercy. Some might say that Christians after the death of Jesus do not pray and confess this way. They should not think and feel this way. I don’t think that’s right.

Jesus, once for all, by his life and death, purchased our forgiveness and provided our righteousness. We can add nothing to the purchase or the provision. We share in the forgiveness and the righteousness by faith alone. But in view of the holiness of God and the evil of sin, it is fitting that we appropriate and apply what he bought for us by prayer and confession every day. “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:11–12). Daily request for bread, because he has promised to meet every need; daily prayer appropriation of forgiveness, because it is fully purchased and secured for us by the death of Jesus.

David’s Responses to His Sin

Psalm 51 is the way God’s people think and feel about the horrors of their own sin. This is a psalm about how be crushed for our sin well. I will try to guide you through four of David’s responses to his sin.

1. He Turns to God

First, he turns to his only hope, the mercy and love of God. Verse 1: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” Three times: “Have mercy,” “according to your steadfast love,” and “according to your abundant mercy.” This is what God had promised in Exodus 34:6–7: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.”

David knew that there were guilty who would not be forgiven. And there were guilty who by some mysterious work of redemption would not be counted as guilty, but would be forgiven. Psalm 51 is his way of laying hold on that mystery of mercy.

We know more of the mystery of this redemption than David did. We know Christ. But we lay hold of the mercy in the same way he did. The first thing he does is turn helpless to the mercy and love of God. Today that means turning helpless to Christ.

2. He Prays for Cleansing
Second, he prays for cleansing from his sin. Verse 2: “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” Verse 7: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Hyssop was the branch used by the priests to sprinkle blood on a house that had a disease in it to declare it clean (Leviticus 14:51). David is crying out to God as his ultimate priest that he would forgive him and count him clean from his sin.

It is fitting that Christians ask God to do this (1 John 1:7–9). Christ has purchased our forgiveness. He has paid the full price for it. That does not replace our asking. It is the basis for our asking. It is the reason we are confident that the answer will be yes. So first David looks helplessly to the mercy of God. And second he prays that, in this mercy, God would forgive him and make him clean.

3. He Confesses the Seriousness of His Sin

Third, David confesses at least five ways that his sin is extremely serious.

3.1. He says that he can’t get the sin out of his mind. It is blazoned on his conscience. Verse 3: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” Ever before him. The tape keeps playing. And he can’t stop it.

3.2. He says that the exceeding sinfulness of his sin is that it is only against God. Nathan had said David despised God and scorned his word. So David says in verse 4: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” This doesn’t mean Bathsheba and Uriah and the baby weren’t hurt. It means that what makes sin to be sin is that it is against God. Hurting man is bad. It is horribly bad. But that’s not the horror of sin. Sin is an attack on God—a belittling of God. David admits this in striking terms: “Against you, you only, have I sinned.”

3.3. David vindicates God, not himself. There is no self-justification. No defense. No escape. Verse 4: “. . . so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.” God is justified. God is blameless. If God casts David into hell, God will be innocent. This is radical God-centered repentance. This is the way saved people think and feel. God would be just to damn me. And that I am still breathing is sheer mercy. And that I am forgiven is sheer blood-bought mercy. David vindicates the righteousness of God, not himself.

3.4. David intensifies his guilt by drawing attention to his inborn corruption. Verse 5: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Some people use their inborn or inbred corruption to diminish their personal guilt. David does the opposite. For him the fact that he committed adultery and murdered and lied are expressions of something worse: He is by nature that way. If God does not rescue him, he will do more and more evil.

3.5. David admits that he sinned not just against external law but against God’s merciful light in his heart. Verse 6: “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” God had been his teacher. God had made him wise. David had done so many wise things. And then sin got the upper hand. And, for David, this made it all the worse. “I have been blessed with so much knowledge and so much wisdom. O how deep must be my depravity that it could sin against so much light.”

So in those five ways at least David joins the prophet Nathan and God in condemning his sin and confessing the depths of his corruption.

4. He Pleads for Renewal

Finally, after turning helpless to God’s mercy, and then praying for forgiveness and cleansing, and then confessing the depth and greatness of his sin and corruption, David pleads for more than forgiveness. He pleads for renewal. He is passionately committed to being changed by God.

He pours out his heart for this change in at least six ways. I can only draw your attention to them. The main point is: Forgiven people are committed to being changed by God. The adulterer, the murderer, the liar, the child molester hate what they were and set their faces like flint to be changed by God.

4.1. He prays that God would confirm to him his election. Verse 11: “Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.” I know some say that Christians who are elect and secure in the sovereign grace of God should not pray like that because it implies you can lose your salvation. I don’t think so.

When David or I pray, “Don’t cast me away, and don’t take your Spirit from me,” we mean: Don’t treat me as one who is not chosen. Don’t let me prove to be like one of those in Hebrews 6 who have only tasted the Holy Spirit. Don’t let me fall away and show that I was only drawn by the Spirit and not held by the Spirit. Confirm to me, O God, that I am your child and will never fall away.

4.2. He prays for a heart and a spirit that are new and right and firm. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalms 51:10). The “right spirit” here is the established, firm, unwavering spirit. He wants to be done with the kind of instability that he has just experienced.

4.3. He prays for the joy of God’s salvation and for a spirit that is joyfully willing to follow God’s word and be generous with people rather than exploiting people. Verse 8: “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice.” Verse 12: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.”

Is it not astonishing that nowhere in this Psalm does he pray directly about sex? It all started with sex, leading to deceit, leading to murder. Or did it? I don’t think so. Sigmund Freud may think that all our hang-ups start with sex. But David (speaking for God) does not see things that way.

Sexual Sin: Symptom, Not Disease

Why isn’t he crying out for sexual restraint? Why isn’t he praying for men to hold him accountable? Why isn’t he praying for protected eyes and sex-free thoughts? The reason is that he knows that sexual sin is a symptom, not the disease. People give way to sexual sin because they don’t have the fullness of joy and gladness in Christ. Their spirits are not steadfast and firm and established. They waver. They are enticed, and they give way because God does not have the place in our feelings and thoughts that he should.

David knew this about himself. It’s true about us too. David is showing us, by the way he prays, what the real need is for those who sin sexually. Not a word in this psalm about sex. Instead: “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. . . . Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing, firm, established spirit.” This is profound wisdom for us.

4.4. He asked God to bring his joy to the overflow of praise. Verse 15: “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” Praise is what joy in God does when obstacles are taken out of the way. That is what he is praying for: O God, overcome everything in my life that keeps my heart dull and my mouth shut when they ought to be praising. Make my joy irrepressible.

4.5. He asks that the upshot of all this will be a life of effective evangelism. Verse 13: “Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.” David is not content to be forgiven. He is not content to be clean. He is not content to be elect. He is not content to have a right spirit. He is not content to be joyful in God by himself. He will not be content until his broken life serves the healing of others. “Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.”

4.6. Which brings us to the last point. Under all this, David has discovered that God has crushed him (v. 8) in love, and that a broken and contrite heart is the mark of all God’s children. Verse 17: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

Brokenhearted Joy

This is foundational to everything. Being a Christian means being broken and contrite. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you get beyond this in this life. It marks the life of God’s happy children till they die. We are broken and contrite all the way home—unless sin gets the proud upper hand. Being broken and contrite is not against joy and praise and witness. It’s the flavor of Christian joy and praise and witness. I close with the words of Jonathan Edwards who said it better than I can.

All gracious affections [feelings, emotions] that are a sweet [aroma] to Christ . . . are brokenhearted affections. A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humble brokenhearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires: their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable, and full of glory, is a humble brokenhearted joy. . . . (Religious Affections [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959], pp. 339f.)

Amen.

EVER FELT LIKE ENDING IT ALL?......THEN YOU'RE IN GOOD COMPANY!

Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah. She said, "May the gods strike me dead if by this time tomorrow I don't take your life the way you took the lives of Baal's prophets."Frightened, Elijah fled to save his life. He came to Beersheba in Judah and left his servant there. Then he traveled through the wilderness for a day. He sat down under a broom plant and wanted to die. "I've had enough now, LORD," he said. "Take my life! I'm no better than my ancestors." 1 Kings 19:2-4

Despair or discouragement. 

Once in a while we all face these emotions in our life. Sometimes the trails we face seem to overwhelm us; knock the will to continue out of us and bring us to the place where we just feel like ending it all.

To someone reading this, you may be going through stuff and you are at the end of your strength. it seems you have come to the end of the road considering what you can put up with. You feel alone and a sense of abandonment engulfs you. The thought of ending it all (whatever it means to you) seems appealing right now.

I would like to start by telling you, that you are NOT alone in these feelings. That you feel this way isn't because you are an immature christian or anything like that. the truth is you are only human.

In the scriptural text above, we read about a great prophet of God who had just come off a great victory in his ministry. He had  just called down fire from heaven(you don't get to see that everyday), disgraced the false prophets of Baal and restored Israel to the worship of the one true God.

What a great time he had!

Just after confronting a king with his sins, facing down a company of false prophets and challenging the belief of a whole nation, a threat comes from a woman.

You would think that a man that had just killed 850 men, humbled a king and a nation, could surely stand his ground against one woman but No. The Bible says Elijah ran for his life!

He was so frightened to face up to his fears that he wished he could die(knowing that he could not take his own life).

What makes a man so anointed and great, run in the face of opposition that seemed less than what he had faced before? What brings a man down after he has had such a great victory? these questions attack my mind as I read the scripture above.

I would like to answer it with one sentence.

Elijah removed his eyes from God and started looking at his own ability!!

When our focus changes to ourselves, then we begin to see utter hopelessness because the task we were called to do was never intended to be accomplished on our own strength. It will always overwhelm us but it cant overwhelm our God,hence, Paul tells us to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might(Eph. 6:10) and also to Look unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.(Heb. 12:2)

Friend if God started it, He can finish it!!! 

Ours is a walk of faith and we only can survive by trusting Him all the way.

Going back to our story, Elijah at the peak of his ministry, when he had just recorded a great success, became so depressed that he wanted to die. 

This tells me that no matter what you have attained in life or where you are in life discouragement can and does sometimes creep in.

How did God intervene in Elijah's case you may ask. God strengthened him, and invited him to his presence where he asked him a simple question

God asked him a question in a still small voice:Suddenly the LORD spoke to him, "Elijah, what are you doing here?" -1 Kings 19:9 

I believe God wanted to prompt Elijah to think for a moment what he was doing where he was at the moment. When at mount Carmel he had just forced a whole nation to turn to God, Elijah seemed to have taken his eyes off God!

It may surprise you to note that just a portion of the anointing that God gave Elijah was poured on Jehu, who eventually defeated Jezebel. In other words what he needed to deal with the problem he faced was already on the inside of him but he needed to keep his trust in God.

Friend, In your discouragement, depression or distress turn to God. David said it the best:

Psa 121:1-3  I look to the mountains; where will my help come from? 
My help will come from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let you fall; your protector is always awake. 

Look away from your troubles for a minute and turn your thoughts God-ward. He hasnt finished with you and he has great plans for you.

I believe i should stop here and maybe continue this later. I pray this helps some stop and turn to the only one that loves us and died for us.

He Cares more than you know.