Written by Ruth Johnstone

My balcony door gives me a view of a vacant lot across from which is the parking lot of the Symth Medical Clinic.

It is Wednesday morning, some clouds and a few raindrops falling. A gentleman is wheeling a lady, presumably his wife, to the car. He gets her in the car and proceeds to fold up the wheelchair and place it in the trunk. He is struggling to get the chair to fit properly. He puts it in, takes it out several times. Do I have time to get over there and give him a hand, after all I’m a pro at folding walkers and wheelchairs and fitting them into the trunk of a car. A young man walks right by him and I am yelling from my chair; ‘help the man’. Of course, he doesn’t see him or hear me, he is looking at his phone for whatever reason. Eventually the gentleman is successful.

Out of nowhere there came, with tears, an overwhelming flood of emotions of grief and guilt. I look at my husband’s urn sitting on the shelf. It will soon be five years since his passing. Did I do enough, was I patient, understanding, caring? Did I handle my frustrations with grace? Did I expose anger and resentment? We lie in bed at night and think of all the things we could have done better and we quote,

Whatever things are true, noble, just, pure, lovely … think on these things.” Philippians 4:8

As parents we ask what we could have done better for our children. Where was I when she/he was calling out for help?

What a challenging year for pastors and Christian leaders. How do I best spend my time? How can I justify being at home?

Our loved ones have been imprisoned in Care homes and isolated in their own homes. There’s Richard and Iris, Lennie, Hilda, and the list goes on. I can do more.

Guilt is a natural response to all the good we do or do not do. It reminds us to do better next time. It is anger directed at ourselves. It can be challenging for us to come to an understanding of ourselves. The back-and-forth way that Paul speaks illustrates his struggle about some of his actions. He did things he did not want to do and did not do the things he should.

Guilt can be a reminder, at times, of our messing up but we must never let the tree of good and evil keep us exposed to our misgivings. We must be reminded of God’s amazing grace and unconditional love and move on. We aren’t finished becoming what God has ordained us to be.

Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13,14

Read about her book “When Troubles Fall Like Lemon Drops”

Written by Heidi McLaughlin

Looking at the trouble all around me makes me weary. But an intersection of choice is always in front of me: I can sigh and complain: “It’s going to be another awful hard day. Covid is rampant, I’ve no place to go, there’s not enough money in the bank, I can’t see my family across the border and restaurants are closed again.” OR, I can focus on: “I’m finally going to get a chance to read my favourite book, go for a long walk, call my friend, prepare positive social media posts, make some soup and Facetime my daughter.”

What we focus on determines how we feel.

Nehemiah was a Godly man with a determined purpose of rebuilding the broken walls around Jerusalem. Nehemiah demonstrated excellent leadership by recognizing a problem, praying about it and focusing on putting the expected results in God’s hands. He gathered the Jewish leaders, priests, nobles and officials and he told them about the gracious hand of God to help them rebuild the walls. With fervour and anticipation, they all replied: “Yes, let’s rebuild the wall!”

The enthusiasm was great until the wall was half finished and the focus shifted. Enemies opposed the rebuilding and the workers were surrounded with mocking and jeering.

That stone wall would collapse if even a fox walked along the top of it!” “What does this bunch of poor feeble Jews think they’re doing?” Those words shifted the focus and people began to complain, “…there is so much rubble to be moved. We will never be able to build the wall by ourselves.”

The focus on the rubble brought trouble and the workers wanted to quit.

That’s what happens to us, isn’t it? When rubble is all we see, and we focus on the negativity, it drains our energy. We want to quit. That’s when we need to overcome our trouble by refocusing on the words we’re listening to. We all need a Nehemiah in our life who gathered the people and reminded them:

… the Lord, who is great and glorious … our God will fight for us!” (Nehemiah 4: 15, 20).

Do you have a Nehemiah?

When the news is bad and rubble is all we can see, we need a Godly leader to help us focus on God’s promises. We need someone to help us re-focus and remind us that our trouble is temporary and we will get through this. We need a Nehemiah for ourselves, but we also need to be a Nehemiah for others. Especially in the middle of Covid whilst rubble is all around us. We need encouragement and words of hope for better days. Looking at the rubble perpetuates trouble. So, I implore all of us to be a Nehemiah and to have your own Nehemiah. Who will that be for you?

Read more about books written by Heidi McLaughlin

Written by Marilyn Cebula

Make no mistake. When you dedicate all of who you are to God, you are exactly who He is looking to work through, without regard to your worldly qualifications or seeming lack thereof.

With God’s power working in us, God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine” Ephesians 3:20.

My life was humming along just fine – loving my involvement in ministry alongside my husband, and five children, as well as my legal assistant job which helped to provide for our family.

Then came a major shift on the job scene when I was asked by the technology department to assist in training for a new firmwide software rollout. That experience sparked something new in me – the excitement of seeing the “light go on” for people struggling to grasp new concepts in a fast-paced environment. And left me with no desire to return to my secretarial job. Near the close of that project, I decided to transition into training on my own and was thrilled to land my first contract.

Fast forward a few weeks, and there I was, on a bus headed downtown with a fancy company laptop resting on the seat beside me. In all my years at the firm, I never needed a laptop – actually, at that time very few of the partners even carried laptops. Sounds impressive, right?

Not so much! As a matter of fact, that day I was on my way to return the fancy laptop after bombing my very first attempt at classroom training. A few short days in, it became painfully obvious – to me and the lady who hired me! – that the particular contract I had taken on was a bad fit. Despite not knowing where my next paycheque would come from, I decided it best to step down while I figured out how to overcome this bumpy start. While I did go on to successfully launch that new career, the experience presented me with an important life lesson.

At some point during that uncomfortable trip, I looked around me at the other people on the bus and wondered if, although no one around me knew my actual circumstances, they could have assumed that I was a typical “professional” -simply because I carried a laptop. Of course, they would have been seriously mistaken.

What about you? Have you ever looked at others, made comparisons and drawn conclusions based on appearances – status, possessions, Facebook posts, you name it, and found yourself lacking – feeling deflated, like you just didn’t “measure up”?
That weakness resides in all of us. Interestingly, God’s Word actually says that He uses our weakness.

God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong … what is viewed as nothing, to bring to nothing what is viewed as something,” ‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭1:27-28‬‬”.‬‬‬‬‬‬

God’s “modus operandi,” quite literally from the beginning, has been to “make something out of nothing”.
On every page of the Bible, God does it time and time again and He’s still doing it today.
God has a tendency of picking up a nobody.

To become a somebody
In front of everybody
Without asking anybody
TobyMac

It’s true – “things are not as they appear”. They are unimaginably greater when you say “yes” to God and allow Him to do more through you than you could ever ask or think.

Written by Eunice Monda

Simon Peter and his business partners had gone fishing for the whole night. They were expert fishermen. They knew the right time to do the job and had committed themselves to it. Although, they worked so hard the whole night, they caught nothing.

In the morning, Simon Peter was frustrated, tired and weary, cleaning his nets. Little did he know that Jesus was pursuing him. Jesus asked him to put his boat out a little from the shore. Then, Jesus sat down and taught the people. When He finished speaking, He told Simon Peter to take his boat out into the deep water and let down the nets for a catch.

Peter answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets”. When he did, he caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. They signaled to their partners to come and help them. This is an amazing story of what God can do in the midst of frustrations – only God’s intervention brings a solution.

Andrew Murray, a South African Christian leader said,

I am here by God’s appointment, in His keeping, under His training, for His time.’’

When life gets tough and things don’t go your way, do not be discouraged. Trust God even when you don’t understand, God is always pursuing the frustrated because of His love. He shows them how great His power is and convinces them of their sin and unworthiness. Luke 5:8(b) “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”

Sometimes God brings adversity into the lives of His people so that they might live to prove that Jesus is more precious to them than anything else.

We always have to remember that, as human beings, we have limitations but relying upon the Lord, impossibilities become possibilities. All that is required is that we trust the Word of Jesus even if it does not make sense. This explains why the Word of God in Proverbs 3:5-7 says,

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.”

Our God delights in surprising us!

Written by Stacey Weeks

We have a friend who defines proper obedience to his kids like this. He says, “Obedience is all the way, right away, without delay.” I love that definition. It’s not only how our children should obey us; it is also how we should obey the Word of God.
In Philippians 2:14-15, Paul gives the believers a command that he expects them to obey.

Do all things without complaining or arguments; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, … ”

We are to do all things without complaining. I did a quick search on the word all, and you’ll be happy to know that it still means all. Do all things. Everything. Without complaining. I don’t know what ‘things’ occupy your day, but mine is pretty packed.

• We homeschool our kids.
• I oversee house cleaning, cooking, and shopping.
• I’m married, so I’m a helpmate to my spouse.
• I’m a student, so I’m trying to complete school assignments.
• I do freelance work, so I have contracts to fulfill.
• We are also a ministry family.

Your list might hold different things than mine, and that’s okay. Whatever things are on your list, Paul says to do all of them without complaining or arguments. But Paul doesn’t know my daughter just spilled hot tea on her brand-new MacBook and ruined it, and she had to use mine until we could replace it. Paul doesn’t know about the extenuating circumstances in your life that make it feel impossible to complete these things with a good attitude, yet that is what he calls us to do “so we can prove ourselves to be blameless and innocent children, above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, to shine like lights”.

We cannot, on our strength alone, shine like lights in a dark world. On my strength, I’m frustrated with my daughter. But God never gives us a list of things to do and says good luck. No. This call to holiness is one of the great and reoccurring themes in Scripture. God calls us to holiness and then, through the power of his Spirit, gives us everything we need to obey the command. We do this on His strength. Everything we do, even the salvation that restores our broken relationship with God, is based on the fact that God is at work in us.

So, yes, do all things without complaining or arguments. Do them all the way, right away, and without delay. Obey like that, and you will shine like lights in this crooked and perverse generation.

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