When You Are At Your End…..

O Lord, rebuke me not in Your wrath, neither chasten me in Your hot displeasure. 
For your arrows have sunk into me and stick fast, and Your hand has come down upon me and pressed me sorely. Psalm 38:1,2

For my iniquities have gone over my head [like waves of a flood]; as a heavy burden they weigh too much for me. Psalm 38:4

My heart throbs, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes, it also is gone from me. Psalm 38:10

My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague; and my neighbors and my near ones stand afar off. Psalm 38:11

They also that seek and demand my life lay snares for me, and they that seek and require my hurt speak crafty and mischievous things; they meditate treachery and deceit all the day long. Psalm 38:12

In these verses we see King David at his end. He is in A LOT of trouble! I can relate with him but not to that extreme! I have been in that place where I been at my end, not knowing what do next. At a loss at what the answer is. We all have been there. That is a part of life we cannot ignore. Troubles will come. But this is my question, when you are at your end what will you do? What will you do?
Will you just give up or keep on hanging on? This is King David’s response when he was at his end:

For in You, O Lord, do I hope; You will answer, O Lord my God. Psalm 38:15

King David had hope in God through the trouble that was happening. As he was at his end he looked to God. This was not the last time he would be at his end. There were several times where he thought he was finished but his hope was always in God. People were trying to kill him but his hope was in God!
His sins where to much for him but even in that, his hope was in God!
The people closest to him abandoned him but his hope was in God.

What situations are you facing? Hope in God. When you are at your end hope in God!
King David didn’t say, God might answer him. He said, “You will answer”!!!
We need to have that same confidence. You may be doubting if God will answer you just know, He will answer you!! We are nothing if we don’t have hope and faith in God.
Where would we be without our hope in God? What would we do without faith? Life is not worth living without hope and faith!!

When you are at your end hope in the Lord. When you are at your end, know the Lord will answer your prayers, He will pull you through!!! He will not leave you to die. He loves you too much…..

Rolain

I Heard Him Clearly!!!

I have had a crazy week! It has been one thing after the other going south! But I guess it comes with the territory.
I discovered something interesting in the midst of all the craziness. Something I did not expect which got me thinking.
As all this craziness was happening I nearly lost it. My strength collapsed. My hope was lost. It is one of those times where you realise there is nothing you can do. I had no answers to the problems that were before me. I just broke down because I felt so helpless.
But this is the interesting thing I discovered in all the craziness, I saw God clearly! His presence was tangible. It’s like the problems I was going through were amplifing His presence! The bible made sense when I read it. I literally felt strength coming into me as I read His word. I felt His hand upon me as I looked to Him. It is amazing. My time with God was different.
The problems have not gone away but I am not freaking out. I have hope now. My quiet times with God are real. God speaks to me and I can hear Him clearly, much clearer than before.
I want this in my life. I need God to be real to me all the time. I almost hear myself praying for hardships because that means more of God! It’s crazy how that works.
I know God is for me. But in times of peace and everything going great it’s often hard to see it. It is mostly in times of trial and pain that we get to see God clearly.
I don’t want to forget that my God is with me. I want to experience Him in new ways everyday regardless of what is happening in my life because He is my God.

Rolain.P.

What are you seeking?

We live in a broken world. A world where negativity is the norm. You can hear it and see it everywhere. Media is fuelled by negativity. That is what sells. The more explicit and raw the material is the better. Our minds have been so seared by the negativity that we don’t flinch anymore. What was considered grotesque years ago is now normal. It is actually cool!! Bad, negative, doom has so infiltrated us that we have been blinded to what is really good.
The worst part of all this is that we stand by as our kids are being brainwashed by all the negativity in the world.
A friend once told me, as long as we live in this world we are being molded into it. We are being intergrated into it. And if we don’t do anything about it we will be lost in the world’s mold.
But God has saved us. He has set us apart from the world. No longer are we to conform to the pattern of the world. We live in this world but we are not part of it.

Now I come to the meat of the matter. The world has infiltrated us so much that we talk like the world. We even think like the world and behave like the world but that is not to be so.
What are we seeking as children of God? What do we expect as children of God? The world has infiltrated even this. We don’t really expect much anymore. We have been exposed to too much negativity that we don’t think we can expect good things all the time. But we can and should seek and expect good things to happen to us.
Let us look at a few scriptures that speak about this:
For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: Seek Me [inquire for and of Me and require Me as you require food] and you shall live! Hosea 5:4

That is the first thing to seek. We need to seek God if we want to live. In this broken world we are to still seek Him. He is the key to life. But now as I read further I found something very interesting. We live in a broken world which is pushing us to conform to its mold. It has affected the way we see life. It has changed what we expect. It has changed the way we think and speak. But this next scripture helped me. It delivered me from that road. It says:
Seek (inquire for and require) good and not evil that you may live, and so the Lord, the God of Hosts, will be with you as you have said. Hosea 5:14
Wow! This verse is like the first one I shared but with a slight but significant difference. We are instructed to seek good and not evil if we are to live. I will say that again. WE ARE TO SEEK GOOD AND NOT EVIL IF WE ARE TO LIVE!!!
All our lives we are trained to seek and expect bad things. We are told to be “realistic”. But not anymore.
This is the thing, as we seek and expect good things we are seeking God and expecting Him! That is the truth that broke the lies the world had filled my mind with.
We need to train ourselves to seek and expect good things in our lives and in other peoples lives. It is so easy to expect doom and gloom but we are children of the light! God has called us so we can bring light into this dark world and we won’t be able to do that if we seek and expect bad things. It won’t happen if we are negative as well. So seek and expect God and understand that as you also seek and expect good things you are seeking God!

The last part of that verse says: “and so the Lord, the God of Hosts, will be with you as you have said”.
In my previous post I spoke about the power of your words and in this scripture we see it again. As we change what we seek and expect, it will be evident in how we speak. We will speak good things and we will speak life and God will do as we have spoken. He will deliver us because we have spoken it. He will save us because that is what we are speaking and expecting. So watch what you say.

As I end I will show you one last scripture:
He who diligently seeks good seeks [God’s] favour, but he who searches after evil, it shall come upon him. Proverbs 11:27

So let us seek God and let us seek and expect good things in our lives.

Rolain.P