Written by Chuck Swindoll, these encouraging devotional thoughts are published seven days per week.
Just as we are different in our appearance, our background, and our levels of maturity and chronological age, so we experience different tests. For all you know, the person living in your neighbourhood is going through one of the deepest times of her or his life.
I'd love to get into my pickup after a tough day at the church, turn the radio on, and have God interrupt, saying, "Before you listen to this station, Chuck, I want to talk to you for a few minutes." Let face it, all of us would love to hear an audible voice or read a visible message from God. But that's not the way it works. Our walk with Him is a walk of faith, not sight.
All of God's people find here a valuable truth we can learn from our God. When people come, open and vulnerable with their confession, there is one appropriate three-word response: I forgive you. They don't need to be put on the spot or shamed because they failed. They need the assurance of forgiveness.
Refuse to let the accusations discourage and derail you, remembering they are nonsense and lies. Get tough! Returning to that one-liner from the Revolutionary War, "Trust in God but keep your powder dry," is essential to keeping your balance. You may be trusting the Lord for safety, but you still lock your doors every night, hopefully, and turn on your alarm.
Chances are good that many of you who are reading these lines are currently the target of someone's lying accusations. That can be an anguishing cross to bear. I've been there, so I speak from painful experience.
Let's fast-forward momentarily and face the music. Some of you who are reading these words have awfully sharp tongues. You say things that cut, but you couch your words in phrases that sound pious and even eloquent. They can sound super religious at times, but they're hurtful and damaging. They imply much more than is actually said. It is here that self-control plays such a vital role.
There is nothing like hope in the truth to clarify perspective and keep you going. Enduring a painful journey can be done a lot more easily if you embrace truth as your travelling companion. Not only will it give you hope, it will clarify your perspective.
I need to pause right here and speak to you whose God is distant and silent. And, perhaps (like Job), your friends have begun to turn against you. There is a future that is brighter than your wildest dreams! As Job will one day experience, justice will win out, God will replace evil, and right will eclipse wrong. In the end, God wins. And so will we.
You know why I love the Bible? Because it's so real. There's a lot of fog rolling into Job's life, just as in our lives. On this earth nobody "lives happily ever after." That line is a huge fairy tale. You're living in a dream world if you're waiting for things to be "happy ever after."
The person sitting near you in church next Sunday, the lady pushing that shopping cart in the grocery store, the one who's putting fuel in his car at the next pump, the man behind you at the movies, waiting to buy his ticket, the student across from you at school. You have no idea what that person is going through.
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