Shelly Beach Shares Help and Hope for the Caregiving Journey on FamilyLife Today

The date for the on air interview has passed, but you can click here to read the transcript.

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 Please tune in to Family Life Today

with Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine
to hear their interview with caregiving author,
Shelly Beach.

Shelly spent several hours with Dennis Rainey &
Bob Lepine, talking about caregiving and her book,

Ambushed by Grace:
Help & Hope on the Caregiving Journey

Be sure to listen in to this important interview.

 AIR DATES:

begins TODAY!

June 22, 23 & 24

To download and listen to the program, click here: http://bit.ly/c7isKQ 

For local RADIO listings, visit your favorite radio station website and check out their program guide.

For more information about Shelly’s caregiving books, please visit

www.dhp.org
(where you can also read a sample chapter) or www.ShellyBeachOnline.com

Is This Your Story (an excerpt from “Restored” by Dan Schaeffer)

DISTRESS: a painful situation: misfortune; a state of danger or desperate need

RESTORE: to put or bring back into existence or use; to put again in possession of something1

Years ago a teenage boy left his teenage girlfriend and their young son. He never returned or stayed in contact with his son. The son grew attached to a new man, a second father, who married his mother. Then the man divorced his mother and forgot about the boy. A third father divorced his mother and only twice called the boy after the divorce, each time to try to get information about his mother.

The boy’s life was in constant turmoil. Three “fathers” walked away from him as if he had never existed. His last name changed regularly, he moved frequently, and he witnessed constant tumult at home between his mother and each new man. Each experience, each change, seemed to make his life worse than it was before.

As a teenager, the son often wished he could put an end to his life, not wanting it to continue, not seeing any hope of positive change.  When he was fourteen, his mother, overwhelmed by her own pain and suffering, attempted suicide and nearly succeeded.

The son felt that fate had given him a bad hand. Insecurities, fears, and doubts filled his life. He was a very distressed young man.

That young man is the author of this book.

I tell you this not to impress you with my difficulties, for many have faced far greater difficulties than I did, but to let you know that this book is not a dry treatise on distress and restoration. I have lived the truth of this book.

Have you lived a distressed life? Is this your story? Chances are good that you are experiencing distress and are desperate to find escape from it, hope within it, and especially restoration after it. Maybe you are in a fractured, stressful relationship or a troubled marriage. You may be in danger of losing everything due to the state of your finances. Maybe you have lost a loved one, your home, your job, or even the ability to work. Your children may be growing apart from you and dismissing everything you hold dear. Perhaps your health is declining. You are in “a painful situation . . . a state of danger or desperate need.” You would like to know that it is all going to go away.

As a person who has recently passed the half-century mark, I can assure you that you have little chance of finding immediate escape from what is distressing you. And if you do escape distress, I can further assure you that it won’t last. Distress is something we find ourselves wearing in this life, like clothes. The specific distress we are “wearing” this week may be different from the distress we were wearing last month, or last year, but distress is to this life what the four seasons are to earth—unchangeable, immutable.

As I said, I do not speak to you as a mere spectator on this subject but as a veteran campaigner. My younger years could best be described as “a painful situation . . . a state of danger or desperate need.”

When I became a pastor I learned quickly that the life of a pastor is much like that of a police officer—the first person called to the scene of an accident. When calamity struck, or when broken relationships or circumstances were so overwhelming that they were no longer worth keeping secret, I was called in.

In short, I live and work in the continual shadow of distress in my own life and the lives of others. Yet, in spite of all the distress that I have endured in my life, I can honestly say with real and genuine conviction that while I would never want to go through what I endured again, I would not undo any of it.

Yes, you read that right.

The distress, as painful as it was, was the work of a Master Artist taking the pieces of a broken life and using them to create a mosaic of such beauty and wonder that it often brings me to tears of gratitude. I echo the heart and words of David in Psalm 16:5–6: “Lord, you have assigned to me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance” (niv). I have experienced God’s restoration—an amazing experience.

I remember the words of Joseph, so badly treated by his brothers and by circumstances; he was in one bad situation after another. After God delivered Joseph from his terrible circumstances, Joseph married and had two children. He named one son Manasseh, meaning “God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household,” and the other Ephraim, because “God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering” (Genesis 41:50–52 niv). The Bible is littered with the accounts of His people in distress experiencing His restoration.

I do not expect you to be able to accept the idea of value in your distress—yet. I know that at this point you probably can’t see any relief, restoration, or purpose for it all. Pain has a way of blurring perspective. But as we examine the restoration found in the pages of the tiny Old Testament book of Ruth, you will begin to see not only the hope of your restoration, but the need of it. When God restores us, He doesn’t just take us back to where we were. He improves us, matures us, deepens us, and enables us to see the value the distress had in our lives.

This book is not another “trouble makes us stronger” bromide, because frankly, distress can also make us bitter, angry, resentful, fearful, and unable to enjoy our lives. I have experienced these emotions in response to my distress. Perhaps you are now struggling with some of these emotions. Your distress makes no sense to you and seems utterly bereft of any value. The truth is that those who respond favorably to the distress and those who respond tragically both endure the same emotions. Their experiences are similar, but their reactions differ. Why is this? Because we choose how we react to our distress. How we respond to our distress has much to do with the nature of our restoration.

When tyrants and dictators desire to punish their enemies, they work them to the point of physical exhaustion, driving them to endure more physically than they can stand. The punishment has but one purpose—to break down the individuals, to destroy their will to oppose the tyrant or fight back. The tyrant is frequently successful. The process leaves people weak and emaciated, skeletal ghosts.

When a football coach prepares his young athletes for the rigors of the season, he strengthens their bodies to be able to endure the physical abuse of the game. He exercises these young men to the point of physical exhaustion, pushing them almost more than they can stand. When he is done, these young men have been “distressed” into athletes whose bodies and minds and wills are stronger than they’ve ever been.

Both the tyrant and the coach “distress” their charges, but for dramatically different reasons. The victims of the tyrant chafe under the ill treatment but are forced to endure it. The young athletes also chafe under the treatment but accept it voluntarily and even gladly. The athletes see value in their distress. Athletes endure the physical pain and agony because they know conditioning makes them stronger, more agile, quicker, and better able to handle the physical beating of the game of football. The coach, though he has to pain and distress his young athletes, has only their best interests at heart. He would be a poor coach and a  worse person if he neglected this aspect of their training and allowed them to be seriously hurt during a game.

In a world where people have abandoned belief in a sovereign and loving God who works His will mysteriously upon the earth, distress is seen as something to be avoided and escaped at all costs. Yet, distress is the necessary prelude to restoration. In the midst of our distress, God is at work to change the things we value, to help us see life from a different perspective. He is restoring us into His image and revealing himself to us in a deeper and clearer way.

In the pages of the Bible, we find a manual on restoration penned by the Holy Spirit. It is called Ruth, and it tells the story of two women who faced one distress after another with no hope for their situation to improve. It is a true story, so it contains what we would expect—initial despair and hopelessness about their situation. It also contains faith and courage, all from the same women. It is not the story of perfect women, but of human women responding to a level of distress that threatened to overwhelm them.

The main character in this powerful little book is never seen. He is the invisible God who works providentially behind the scenes, ever present and attentive, choreographing the movements in this gripping drama.

The story has one other essential character—and that is the person willing to take the amazing principles found in this story and apply them to his or her own distress. This is why God left us this precious book. That person is you. For in the book, we learn that restoration is real, life altering, and attainable by anyone who would submit himself or herself to the necessary process of restoration.

There is inestimable value in your current distress. It is far from random. It has a purpose and a goal and an objective far beyond anything you could imagine. It is no more designed to destroy you than is the surgery that removes the cancer, the shot that prevents the disease, the tourniquet that stops the hemorrhaging, or the first painful steps of therapy after reconstructive surgery.

A brilliant, divine picture, a portrait of you so beautiful you could never recognize it on this side of eternity, exists in the mind of our Lord, and each distress He allows in our lives is His divine brushstroke, adding color, maturity, depth of character, and a deep and eternal beauty that will be with you forever.

So journey with me as we view a divine snapshot in history, a moment that God etched forever on the pages of His eternal Word to remind us that distress, your distress, has great value, and that distress is but a prelude to the restoration God has planned.

This excerpt was taken from Restored! God’s Salvage Plan for Broken Lives

©2011 by Dan Schaeffer

All rights reserved.
Discovery House Publishers
Grand Rapids, Michigan

978-1-57293-454-2
pp. 7 – 12

To order a copy of Restored!, please click here.

Email publicity@dhpinreview.com, if you work in print or broadcast media or have a professional blog/website and would like a review copy.

Written in Tears

Written In Tears by Luke Veldt

Sacrifice of Praise: Aligning Yourself with God

It is in times of suffering, of course, that aligning yourself with God presents a special challenge. How can you align yourself with God’s purposes when you don’t understand what’s happening around you? When your world has caved in on you?

But perhaps it’s in such times that aligning yourself with God becomes truly meaningful.

The author of the book of Hebrews talks about offering to God “a sacrifice of praise.”10 The sacrifice of praise must cost us something. Every sacrifice has a price; that’s what makes it a sacrifice. A sacrifice that doesn’t cost anything is not worth anything.11

So perhaps praise that costs nothing is not worth much either—or, at least, not worth as much. It’s easy to praise God when things are going well, and it’s the right thing to do. But if we can offer praise to God only when we are basking in His blessings, it’s an empty exercise. By praising God in the hard times—not by pretending to be happy, but by praising Him in the midst of sadness—we validate our praise for Him in the good times.

The more it costs us to praise Him, the more our praise is worth.

David will bless God, regardless of what it costs him. His attitude seems to be, “Though my heart is heavy, I will bless the Lord. I know He loves me, no matter what happens, so I choose to bless Him. I’m on His side.”

In his determination to stick with God despite his pain, David greatly resembles the most steadfast of the Old Testament sufferers, Job. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away,” Job said on the day that he lost his children, his wealth, and his reputation. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Sometimes people of faith have a hard time remembering that suffering was an excruciatingly painful process for Job. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord,” we quote Job brightly—forgetting that when he said it he had shaved his head and torn his clothes and that a few days later he was sitting on an ash heap, covered in painful boils and cursing the day he was born.

Job, while blessing the Lord, felt no compulsion to act the way a righteous man was expected to act. He questioned the justice of God, he begged God to leave him alone, he scrounged for answers to his dilemma in places that the theologians of his day thought inappropriate. He was, in fact, blessing God with everything in his being, by seeking out God honestly. “Yes, I will bless the Lord despite my suffering. I will bless Him with my very doubts and fears and despair, if I have to. I’ll keep at Him with all that is within me until He responds. Though He slay me, yet will I trust him; I’ll bless him if it kills me.”12

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10. Hebrews 13:15

11. King David understood this well. See the story of his sacrifice in 2 Samuel 24, especially verses 22–24: “Then Araunah said to David, ‘Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him; here are the oxen for the burnt offering, and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king . . .’ But the king said to Araunah, ‘No, but I will buy them from you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.’ So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.”

12. Job 13:15 NKJV: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. Even so, I will defend my own ways before Him.”
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This excerpt was taken from Written in Tears: A Grieving Father’s Journey Through Psalm 103

©2010 by Luke Veldt
All rights reserved.
Discovery House Publishers
Grand Rapids, Michigan.

978-1-57293-382-8
pp. 38-39

To order a copy of Written in Tears, please click here.

Email publicity@dhpinreview.com, if you would like a review copy.

God is Not a Divine Footnote in Our Story

For those on Twitter who have commented on Dr. M. Gay Hubbard’s quote on God not being a footnote in our story, here is the quote in context.
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When pain and loss push us up against the limits of our story and we find, like the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, that the human story taken alone makes no sense at all, then we are ready to consider seriously the fact that God has a story too.

Then we can see that we have stood the truth of God’s presence in the universe on its philosophical head. With profound spiritual narcissism we have assumed that the ultimate meaning of our story lies in our presence in it. We have then assumed that God, being great and loving, is responsible to come into our story and make our story a good story in which there is no hard thing that we must endure. If He is a good God, we argue, He will come be in our story and make everything there all right.

It is part of the great good news of our Christian faith that God is passionately interested in making everything all right. But God has a plan for doing that, and that is a part of His story, not just of ours.

God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—decided in the limitless reaches of eternity to make a world. The world they made was beautiful and good. But a great and terrible tragedy occurred. God’s creatures, made in His image, chose to disobey Him, and a terrible chasm was established between God and His own. But God had a plan. God the Son came down to us and was human with us—God’s lost and fallen creatures—and in love He laid down His life for us. When He returned to heaven, He left an empty tomb, the promise of the Spirit, and, through John, a glimpse into the last chapter of God’s story. In that last chapter, the bent and broken things are all made new, and evil is utterly destroyed. At the end in God’s story there is no more pain, no more tears, and no darkness—there is only light—the indescribable undimmed timeless light of God’s presence with us in a world in which the old and terrible things have passed away (Revelation 21:1–5).

God is not unreasonable nor is He uncaring. But He is unwilling to abandon His great story in order to function simply as a divine footnote in our own. Yet, at the same time, God is committed to our story too. When we become willing through relationship with Him to incorporate our story into His, God in turn enters into our story in a new way that empowers us to accept and to transcend the brokenness of ourselves and of our world. Our story takes on both personal meaning and eternal significance when we become part of God’s story too.

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Taken from page 312-312 of More Than An Aspirin: A Christian Perspective on Pain and Suffering ©2009 by M. Gay Hubbard. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All Rights Reserved.

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Finding Hope in Life’s Losses

BEYOND THE VALLEY

Introduction

I never planned to have valleys on the topographical map of my life. My map, as I saw it, would always consist of the high road. The smooth road. The pathway lit up by God’s love and decorated with His gift of the abundant life. It was to be the journey of the trying-to-be-godly-but-appreciating-aforgiving-God Christian. The walk of the trusting believer.

Yet here I am, still surprised and shocked to be walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

The way I figured it, my wife and I would raise up our four kids in the way they should go, and when we were old they would all be there to take care of us.

We were thirty years into this marriage-and-family thing, and we were enjoying God’s continued blessing.

We loved the stuffing out of life. Not that every day was always easy and full of smiles and laughing, but for the most part, our direction was still heading securely toward the road to blessedness. Up on the mountain. Far from the valley.

Take Thursday, June 6, 2002, for instance.

It was a typical day in the light of God’s grace. In fact, it was a bright, sunny, warm day that reminded us that the good times of summer were about to shine across our lives. And since it was the last day of school, our kids were enjoying the lightheartedness of impending vacation.

At home on that evening, my fifteen-year-old son Steve and I had settled in to keep an eye on the Detroit Red Wings’ hockey game. We weren’t huge hockey fans, but this was the Stanley Cup playoffs and these were our Red Wings, so we were tuned in.

Julie, our second-oldest daughter, had just come home from her summer job at a grocery store, reminding us again that this job made her extremely thankful that she had just graduated from college and would soon be heading for her first teaching job at a Christian school in Florida.

Indeed, the sisters—Julie, Lisa (our oldest, who lived in Ohio with her husband Todd and was a schoolteacher), and our youngest daughter, Melissa—had already purchased plane tickets for an all-sisters vacation in Orlando, Florida. The sisters (born strategically four years apart, each in July) were to take in the wonderful world of Disney, and then the rest of us would show up at Pompano Beach to move Julie and her stuff into her place near the Christian school where she would be debuting as a teacher.

The summer looked bright enough to call for sunglasses.

But back to our June 6 evening. Sue, my wife, was reading the paper, winding down her day and preparing to go to bed. She had to be on the job early the next day at the nursing home where she was a nurse—and where Melissa worked part-time. Mell, too, would be working on Friday.

Sue didn’t want to go to bed until she knew Melissa was safely home. Mell was at a cottage on Lake Michigan with some school friends where the parents hosted an end-ofschool party of pizza, jet-skiing, and just good times. Melissa had called her mom at eight o’clock to tell us she would be on her way home with her boyfriend Jordan at nine.

The path of our life had been so direct. Four kids. Four kids who had trusted Jesus and made us proud. The pathway of a family with its eye on loving each other and honoring God in life. We could see the valley, but it seemed so far away as to be inaccessible.

Yet at just after nine p.m. on that gorgeous Michigan spring night, our lives veered off the path we thought would be ours for the rest of our time on earth. We careened off that pathway and went straight into the valley—an unfamiliar, dark, and deep ravine of near hopelessness.

While Jordan and Melissa were on their way home that evening, traveling on an unfamiliar road, Jordan pulled his car into an intersection—where it was hit broadside by another teen driver.

Melissa, our seventeen-year-old daughter and sister—a girl who loved to cook odd concoctions in the kitchen, who never liked to be idle for a minute, who played varsity softball and volleyball, who had a solid though not flashy faith in Jesus, who was a bright light of joy and love to her many friends at school
and church, and who had grown from a frightened little preschooler into a self-confident teen—was killed instantly.

Our family was plunged into a new existence. Now the mountaintop was so far away we couldn’t see it.

Suddenly, and without warning, we found ourselves walking numbly through the valley of the shadow of death. We were thrust into the place where we had to test the Psalm 23 promise that God’s presence will make sure we “fear no evil.”

We found ourselves in a far different place than we had ever been in before.

A place where life is not as much fun as it used to be.

A place where harmless words from well-meaning others can turn into unshakeable irritants.

A place where hearing other people harmlessly laughing often seems completely incongruous with how we feel.

A place where the God we knew and loved and served sometimes seems more mysterious than knowable—and we realized this just at the time we needed Him the most, when we first arrived in the valley.

Have you ever been in the valley? The valley that comes with life’s troubles and pain?

If so, or if you have ever walked with those who dwell in its misty atmosphere, I invite you to walk along with me for a while. As I journey, I am continually seeking the help of the One who promised never to leave me. I’m begging the One who said not to fear to give me peace. I’m pleading with the God of all comfort to explain what that word means to the uncomfortable. I’m clinging with all my might to the One who said I could never be plucked from His hand. I’m struggling to trust completely the One I trusted with my daughter—knowing that she now dwells in His presence and not mine.

Walk with me, won’t you? Together, we can find hope, solace, comfort, and sometimes even joy—while seeking to go beyond the valley.

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This excerpt was taken from Beyond the Valley: Finding Hope in Life’s Losses

©2010 by Dave Branon
All rights reserved.
Discovery House Publishers
Grand Rapids, Michigan.

978-1-57293-373-6
pp. 7-10

To order a copy of Beyond the Valley, please click here.

Email publicity@dhpinreview.com, if you would like a review copy.

The Roller Coaster of Unemployment

They cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. Psalm 107:28 NIV

When my family and I arrived at the amusement park, I teased to go on the Dragon Coaster. I had seen the advertisements on television that showed the dragon-like shape of the twisted, twirly, mountainous roller coaster. Now I could hardly wait to get through the lines and board the ride so I could experience the fun for myself.

Unfortunately I was only seven years old, and I had never ridden a roller coaster before. Though my family had tried to warn me about how  scary roller-coaster rides can be, I didn’t have a clue about what all their talk meant. I just giggled excitedly during the wait time and teased to be allowed to sit with the big kids in the front of the car when we chose our seats.

As the ride began, the roller coaster car clanked and smoked (like a dragon) and chugged up the tallest hill I had ever been on. I could see the entire amusement park laid out below. I chattered even more, pointing out the wonderful sights to my seatmates.

But as the car reached the top of that first hill, my chattering came to an abrupt halt. I couldn’t see any more track in front of me. I didn’t know what to expect. When the coaster topped the hill and started to whoosh down the other side, you wouldn’t believe the screams that escaped my lips. The twists and turns that had looked so innocent and simple to me while I was waiting for the ride to begin now felt intimidating and scary. The ride along the twisty, green corkscrew track that had looked like so much fun now set my stomach churning, threatening to take my lunch away. Though the ride lasted fewer than two minutes, it ruined the rest of my day at the park, leaving me exhausted and too scared to try anything new.

When you lose your job, whether for rightsizing, business closures, a poor economy, or just because your boss had a bad day, the days spent between losing your old job and finding a new one can seem a lot like a bad roller-coaster ride. You’re on that roller coaster even though you might not want to be, and now you have to ride that hill for all it’s worth. You try to hold on tight as you navigate the twists and turns, excited at the possibility of a new job, an interview, or a lead. But then you’re tumbled all around with disappointment when the phone stays silent for days on end, when no one returns your e-mails, when all the leads dry up. The dark fear of the unknown is like a roller-coaster tunnel with no bright sunshine of a job in sight. One day you’re up; the next day you’re down. The thought of it all leaves you exhausted and sick to your stomach. I should know. Unemployment has happened to my husband and me four times.

Well, if this is where you find yourself too, take heart. The Bible says when God’s children call out to Him in their distress, He hears and comes to their aid.  Sometimes He acts instantaneously, but sometimes His timetable takes a little longer. Yet He is always faithful to provide for His children. While you’re waiting for His plan to unfold, my hope is the Bible verses, inspirational stories, helpful checklists, journalstyle questions, and encouraging words in this book will help you ride The Roller Coaster of Unemployment.

God’s blessings be yours.

—S. M. Hupp
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This excerpt was taken from The Roller Coaster of Unemployment: Trusting God for the Ride

© 2010 by Sarah M. Hupp
All rights reserved.
Discovery House Publishers is affiliated with RBC Ministries,
Grand Rapids, Michigan.

978-1-57293-376-7
pp. 9-10

To order a copy of The Roller Coaster of Unemployment, please click here.

Email publicity@dhpinreview.com, if you would like a review copy.

Are You Living with a Broken Heart?

Sometimes life leaves us with a hurt or pain that lingers. A thorn in the side, as the Apostle Paul referred to his unnamed struggle. You may be facing loneliness, illness, weariness, fear, or a broken heart. God may seem silent or cruel.

We know that God can heal, but what about when He chooses not to? What about when God doesn’t make life better the way you think he should? These are the types of questions Mary Ann Froehlich pursues in her new release Living with Thorns. Froehlich, music therapist and teacher, has worked in hospitals, schools, churches, and private practices. The examples she shares are from real life. The comfort and hope she offers is also real.

Below is a short exerpt from one of her chapters.
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My days have passed, far otherwise than I had planned,
and every fiber of my heart is broken.
Job 17:11 TJB

After teaching her morning Bible study, Liz returned home to find a note left by her husband. He had packed his things and left. Liz never saw this coming; she was blindsided. She and her husband had been married twenty-five years, raised children,and been active in their church. Later she would learn that her husband had become involved with a female co-worker in his office.

Liz hoped for reconciliation, but her husband pursued a
divorce. During the first weeks of her initial shock, Liz experienced chest pains so severe that she went to the hospital. She thought that she was having a heart attack, but instead her heart was breaking.

Scientists recently have named this experience stress cardiomyopathy, or broken heart syndrome. The symptoms are similar to a heart attack but do not normally cause permanent damage. Older women are the majority of sufferers. Severe sadness and shock can create high levels of stress hormones, catecholamines, in our bloodstream, which may affect the heart. Patients have trouble breathing and feel intense pain.

Depression and loneliness have also been linked to heart disease. Different from cardiomyopathy, these extended experiences can have long-term effects. Suffering a broken heart is a true phenomenon, and it is centuries old.

The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
   he gathers the exiles of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted
  and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:2-3 NIV)

Our Lord is the doctor of our souls. God knows us at our core because He created our fragile minds and bodies. Isaiah tells us that he came to heal the brokenhearted.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
    to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim freedom for the captives
    and release from darkness for the prisoners. (Isaiah 61:1NIV)

We may experience a broken heart through rejection or betrayal by a spouse, parent, or child. Our hearts may feel broken due to a traumatic loss. We grieve our own brokenness. This pain is the offering we lay on the altar: “My sacrifice is this broken spirit, you will not scorn this crushed and broken heart” (Psalm 51:17 TJB).

God understands and is tender with our broken hearts. He is the perfect parent who wraps His arms around us and never lets go as we weep.

Put your head on the chest of God and weep. -Nicole Johnson
______________________________

Taken from Living with Thorns
©2009 by Mary Ann Froehlich

To purchase a copy of this book, please click here.
To review this book, please email me at publicity@dhpinreview.com.

What is the Truth About When Things Go Bad?

 

“If you obey Jesus you will have a life of joy and delight.” Well, it is not true. Jesus said to the disciples, “Let us go to the other side of the lake,” and they were plunged into the biggest storm they had ever known. You say, “If I had not obeyed Jesus I should not have got into this complication.” Exactly. The temptation is to say, “God could never have told me to go there, if He had done so this would not have happened.” We discover
then whether we are going to trust God’s integrity or listen to our own expressed skepticism. (HSGM)

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit” (Psalm 51:17)-that of a spirit God has made glad by a great forgiveness. The sign of this kind of broken heart is that the saint is untroubled by storms, and undismayed by bereavement because he is confident in God. (NJ)

Reflection Questions
When things go badly, do I see it as an indication that I have been mistaken about God’s leading or about God’s love? Am I prepared to accept that perhaps neither is true? What better explanation is there?

Taken from Hope: A Holy Promise
© 2009 by Oswald Chambers Publications Association Limited.
All rights reserved.

Where is Your Hope in Troubled Times?

Hope – A Holy Promise
by Oswald Chambers

 We all need hope, particularly in these difficult times, and Christians have a hope that the world knows nothing of. For believers, the word hope expresses not uncertainty, but certainty, a glorious expectation of the future based on God’s holy promise.

This book of quotes by Oswald Chambers will build up your hope and focus it where it belongs: not on changing circumstances, but on the unchanging Word of God.

Best known for his classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest, Chambers has much to say about the precious gift of hope—and about the one in whom we hope, Jesus Christ.

Brand new to the series of Oswald Chambers gift books, Hope: A Holy Promise includes reflection questions to help you connect Chambers’ biblical wisdom to your own life.

Oswald Chambers (1874 -1917) is best known for the classic devotional, My Utmost for His Highest. Born in Scotland, Chambers had a teaching and preaching ministry that took him as far as the United States and Japan. He died at age forty-three while serving as chaplain to British Commonwealth troops in Egypt during World War 1. More information can be found in his biography: Oswald Chambers—Abandoned to God by David McCasland 

An excerpt of Hope will be posted later in the week. Be watching.