Why Won’t God Just Take Me?

1 Peter 5:6-7 “So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and in His good time He will honor you. Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about what happens to you.”

I’ve been reading a great book on the strength of prayer called 90 Minutes in Heaven. It was written by John Piper and it describes what took place when he got hit head-on by a big rig trucker. His body was literally crushed and was pronounced dead on the scene by emergency personnel. Another pastor happened to get caught up in the traffic jam and decided to see if anyone involved needed prayer. The emergency personnel told him that the driver in John’s car was already dead. In spite of being told this, he strongly felt God leading him to pray for John even though he was already dead.

Is All Really Good?

Romans 8:28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”

Have you ever had one of those times where you tell yourself that it just couldn’t get any worse? Or maybe you’ve had more than just one of them. No matter the situation, the last thing you want to hear from anyone is that God has it all under control. I don’t know about you, but I have had a few times that I have felt that even if God, Himself, came down and spoke directly to me I would have questioned if He really did have it under control. It is especially at times like that that I realize why God doesn’t let me make decisions my way all the time.

Through the Eyes of God

Mark 10:14 “Let the children come to Me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.”

Ask any couple who is pregnant or anyone who already has children if they had a preference to having a son or daughter and they will respond most of the time, “I just want to have a healthy baby.” I have heard so many times that once their baby was born they immediately counted the fingers and toes and then breathed a sigh of relief. This fact is so important to most of us with children that we had a test done during the pregnancy to determine if the baby would have some sort of defect in their DNA.

Bring Me To My Knees

Luke 14:33 “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.”

There are so many things that I love in life. I love my wife and daughter. I love good music and a good book. And I love good food. We use that word so easily to describe things in our life and it has so many different meanings. But when we don’t have them, many times we just find something else to replace it with. For example, if I can’t have that ice cream I love so much I just find the next best thing and have that; I realize I love it just as much. But there are some things that I can’t do without, like my family. I don’t know what I would do without them in my life.

I Will Never Leave You

We have all heard it and most of us have probably said it more than once: “Where was God when…?” Go ahead and fill in the blank with the first thing that comes to mind. What was that for you? Where was He when the wall of water came rushing toward thousands of unsuspecting people in Japan after they just experienced the worst earthquake in their history? I bet more than just a few of you asked where He was when the Twin Towers came falling down on that fateful day on 9-11. We do that all the time.

The Prodigal Son Not Forgotten

How many times have we heard the phrase “Life is Tough”? I bet if we took a poll just about everyone has. And what’s even worse is we have all been touched by tragedy at least once over our lifetime. We each have times that we can look back on and remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when some life-changing event hit us like a ton of bricks. I know exactly where I was when I heard my father died.