Good morning. I hope you had a blessed Sunday and possibly a true Sabbath day of rest. In our current culture it is most difficult to honor the Sabbath due to all the options for busyness available to us. But trying to cease from all normal activity and choosing to rest is still a noble goal. Good luck with this one.
In my last post I pointed out that Jesus “embraced the struggles and used them for positive purposes.” How do I try to maintain a positive attitude/spirit when things aren’t going well? I do so by trying to live with an eternal value system, rather than a temporal value system. I try to view life from the vantage point of James 1:2-4 and I Peter 1:6,7 and Romans 5:3-5. What do all of these have in common? They say that “the testing of your faith produces steadfastness …that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” “your faith – more precious than gold” “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” I believe that God wants to do a work IN ME so that He can do a work THROUGH ME.
The skeptics of the world do not take much notice of how much we are blessed by God. They think we are just lucky. But the skeptics do take notice when tragedy and hardships visit us but do not shake us. Followers of Jesus put material blessings in their proper place. “If my house is blown away by a storm, it’s just a house. It’s just another opportunity to show the world that we value that which lasts for eternity (people), not that which lasts only for a lifetime.”
