Andrew Murray, a famous pastor and theologian, said several important things about the tough times in the life of a believer. First, when you find yourself in a tough time, know that you are there by God’s appointment. Second, you are surrounded by God’s love even in the midst of the circumstances. Third, He is teaching you something and is training you. And, finally,
Jonah the prophet ran from what he considered a difficult and abhorrent assignment from God, thinking he could escape to a place where he couldn’t be found. He refused to obey the Lord and he boarded a ship headed in the opposite direction. But God’s irrevocable gifts and callings were faithfully resting upon His servant Jonah, and He provided the drama needed to bring
More than 90 years ago, the state of South Dakota commissioned a sculptor named Gutzon Borglum to select a mountain in that state where he could sculpt some figures from the Old West as a tourist attraction. But instead, Borglum sculptured the faces of four presidents on what we all know today as Mount Rushmore. The workers used dynamite to form the faces from
And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was valued by them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house
During his reign, King Frederick William III of Prussia found himself in a bind. Wars had been costly, and in trying to build the nation, he was seriously short of finances. After careful reflection, he decided to ask the women of Prussia if they would bring their jewelry of gold and silver to be melted down for their country. For each piece of jewelry
A few years ago, there was a fascinating article in Bloomberg about how the prices of some paintings are falling rapidly. As I read the article, I wondered just how much paintings actually go for. The most expensive painting according to Wikipedia was sold for over $300 million. It’s called “Interchange” by Willem de Kooning. Then, there was another painting called “Number 17A” by
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev used to tell of a time when there was a wave of petty theft in the Soviet Union. To curtail this, the authorities put guards around the factories. At a timber works in Leningrad, one guard knew the workers in the factory very well. The first evening, out came Pyotr Petrovich with a wheelbarrow containing a great bulky sack with
You can know someone, even think you know them well, but there are times when something comes up and you discover you really didn’t know them like you thought you did. You really know someone when you are intimate with them, when you know all of their ins and outs, their deepest needs and secrets. Some people know about Jesus, but don’t care. They think He
When I was a boy, we had an old radio that had been in our family for a long time. On occasion, static would come on that radio, and my dad would just smack the side of the radio to make the static go away. Could it be that when storms or difficulties come into our lives that God is just “slapping us” on
John D. Rockefeller was once asked, “How much money does it take to satisfy somebody?” He famously answered, “Just a little more.” That seems to be true, doesn’t it? No one is immune to greed. A person can have much and be greedy, or a person can have little and be greedy. Jesus says to beware of all forms of greed, because a person
