The apostle Paul suffered. He was imprisoned. He was beaten, often near death. He took 195 total lashes from his Jewish kinsmen on five occasions. He took three pummels with rods. He was once stoned — and then also shipwrecked three times. Then there are the endless dangers of travel in the first century, plus countless other experiences mentioned and unmentioned in the New Testament.

How did he take so much pain? So much loss? How did he prepare for suffering? The answer is in Philippians 3:7–8 – Counting Everything As Loss

Basically, the apostle took a long look at his life apart from Christ. All the things that he valued — his Jewish pedigree, his place in the upper echelon of religious society, his law-keeping — he took a long look at this list and wrote “LOSS” over it.

It wasn’t just the past values of his personal life. It wasn’t just “whatever gain he had.” Paul looks out into the future and declares everything as loss. Everything out there that could pass as positive. Everything good that he has yet to experience and everything which he will never experience. Compared to Jesus, everything is loss.

To consider Jesus better than everything else in the world is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian.

And that’s how Paul prepared for suffering. He saw Jesus as superior to everything else. John Piper lays it out this way: Suffering is nothing more than the taking away of bad things or good things that the world offers for our enjoyment — reputation, esteem among peers, job, money, spouse, sexual life, children, friends, health, strength, sight, hearing, success, etc. When these things are taken away (by force or by circumstance or by choice), we suffer. But if we have followed Paul and the teaching of Jesus and have already counted them as loss for the surpassing value of gaining Christ, then we are prepared to suffer.

This means that if we treasure Jesus, then every aspect of suffering in our lives is losing something we have already declared as loss. If when you become a Christian you write a big red “LOSS” across all the things in the world except Christ, then when Christ calls you to forfeit some of those things, it is not strange or unexpected. The pain and the sorrow may be great. The tears may be many, as they were for Jesus in Gethsemane. But we will be prepared. We will know that the value of Christ surpasses all the things the world can offer and that in losing them we gain more of Christ.

None of us knows the sorrows that may meet us tomorrow and are sure to meet us if Jesus tarries. We don’t know what hardships God will call us to walk through. But even though we don’t know them, we can prepare for them. And the way we prepare for afflictions then is by gaining Jesus now. It will not minimize the pain. Not at all. But we will know, even in the darkest night, that Jesus is our God and all, that He is our Rock and treasure, that He is enough. The way we suit up for our sufferings tomorrow is by cultivating our love for Jesus today.                                 (JONATHAN PARNELL)

My name is Abby Rosenboom and I came to know Christ at a very young age. I grew up going to church with my family. I was surrounded by incredible, godly people who loved me and cared for me. I knew many stories in the Bible, and had several verses memorized, but there was so much more I was missing.I started high school in 2008, and it didn’t take long before sports and school completely consumed my life. One of the biggest struggles during that time was living up to the expectations of those around me. I come from a family full of success in academics, athletics, career, and so much more. I felt an immense amount of pressure to be the best. Although this pressure led to achievements I take pride in, I found myself miserable by the cycle it took to get me there.

The summer after graduating from high school, I was invited to go on a Project Serve mission trip to Nicaragua with Youth for Christ. During small groups one night, I remember saying that I didn’t need God. I had worked so hard on my own for my success that I didn’t feel He was important or necessary in my life. It wasn’t until months after that I began to think about what happens to all I’ve worked for when I die. Who was going to care about my accomplishments in my teenage years? I would just be another face in the high school yearbook. As morbid as those thoughts were, they ultimately led me to the realization that I was living my life for meaningless things.

In 2013, I started volunteering at Campus Life and my church.  Here I have the privilege of working with amazing students who enrich my life and fill me with so much joy. I am also blessed beyond measure by the outstanding youth ministry leaders who encourage me and invest in my life like no one has before. I’ve learned so much about God and His heart for me, and for all people, and it sparked my desire to show that love to others. The more I allow God to use me, the more my faith grows.

If there is one truth I have learned through this all, it is this – believing in God doesn’t change your life, surrendering to Him does.

A man and his wife pulled into a gas station to refuel their car. As the gas tank was being filled, the gas station attendant began to wash  the  windshield. When he
finished, the driver of the car said, “The windshield is still dirty. Wash it again.” “Yes, sir,” the attendant answered. As he scrubbed the windshield a second time, he carefully looked for any bugs or dirt he might have missed. When he finished, the man in the car became angry. “It’s still dirty!” he said. “Do it again!”

The attendant cleaned the windshield a third time. By now, the driver was fuming. He yelled, “What’s wrong with you, man? This windshield is still filthy! I’m going to talk to your boss to make sure you don’t work here another day.” As the man was about to get out of the car, his wife reached over, removed his glasses and wiped them with a tissue, then put them back on his face. The driver was terribly embarrassed when he realized the windshield was spotless.  The problem wasn’t the gas station attendant, but the driver’s dirty glasses.

We all have blind areas in our life that we are unable to see. Sometimes, it can terribly damage our lives and the lives of others. Spiritual blindness is not a small matter. So what makes us spiritually blind? Actually, our spiritual eyesight is supposed to progressively improve until we go to heaven. God often uses difficulties in our lives to enlighten our soul and improve our spiritual sight. But it’s also possible that our spiritual eyes become blurry due to these difficulties and so we fail to see God’s glorious hope for us in heaven. Our spiritual sight can also become blurry due to other spiritual reasons, like the sin of pride, bitterness, anger, grudges, bad theology, false assumptions, fixed ideas, or any deceptiveness of sin. We have to examine ourselves. Is your spiritual vision improving or deteriorating? If it’s not improving, we must examine ourselves to see what is blocking us from having 20/20 spiritual vision. We need to remove these hindrances through sincere repentance.

What do you see day-to-day? Do you see the glorious kingdom of God coming soon? Are you truly hoping for God’s kingdom to come? If our spiritual vision is blurry, it’s hard to run the race to the end. It’s hard to give ourselves fully to the work of Lord. We cannot run the race to the end. May the Lord restore our spiritual vision and the joy of His salvation in us day by day so that we can run the race of our faith to the end.                    (BENELLY)

1) THAT YOU DO JUSTLY: That we act with fairness, integrity, and honesty is at the heart of what it is to follow God. How you deal with your neighbor, your boss, or even a stranger is the heart of how you deal with God. This is Jesus’ message in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. You cannot separate behavior from belief –  that  is  exactly  what  was  going  on  in   Israel  and   it’s
exactly what is going on today in the church. Belief and behavior are integrally linked.

2) THAT YOU LOVE KINDNESS: To surround ourselves with compassion, empathy, and steadfast love for each other. It’s interesting that this term stands in the center of the triumvirate of Justice and walking with God. It tempers our justice and it flows from our walk with God. Justice without mercy is barbaric – yet mercy without justice leads to destruction. God calls on his people to love kindness or mercy. We are to be a people who love people with God’s own heart. Jesus said that the world would know us by “our love for one another.” Why? Because it is the distinctive pattern of the heart committed to God. The heart that has been touched by the love of God is seen to exhibit and flow with the compassion, forgiveness, and love of God for others.

3) THAT YOU WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD: To walk humbly with God means…
• Match His Course – walking in the same direction as Him. You cannot go your own way, do your own thing, and be your own person and expect God to bless it. The blessing is in walking with God not asking Him to walk with you.
• Match His pace – we are called to walk with God – to accompany Him – not to run ahead or lag behind. Running ahead always leads us down wrong paths. Lagging behind we lose sight of the One we are following and often get lost.
• Match His purpose – become His disciple. We are not coequals with God. We are the creation – He is the creator. We are the disciples – He is the Teacher. We are the servants – He is the master. We are the children – He is the Father. Understand the relationship. Too often we act with God like rebellious teens act with their parents – struggling for control – struggling to be number one – God’s requirement is that we walk humbly with Him – acknowledging His sovereignty, His leadership and His Lordship. The wonder is that He has invited us into that relationship.

Gods requirements for us are simple
Live right – with integrity and justice
Love right – with compassion and mercy and steadfastness
Walk with Him – lives as disciples to the Most High God.                   (DAN CALE)

IS READING THE BIBLE A NECESSARY PART OF YOUR DAY OR DOES IT HAVE A LOW PRIORITY IN YOUR LIFE?
When their son left for his freshman year at Duke University, his parents gave him a Bible, assuring him it would be a great help. Later, as he began sending them letters asking for money, they would write back telling him to read his Bible, citing chapter and verse. He would reply that he was reading the Bible–but he still needed money. When he came home for a semester break, his parents told him they knew he had not been reading his Bible. How? They had tucked $10 and $20 bills by the verses they had cited in their letters.  (JOHN T. SPACH)

HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE READING YOUR BIBLE?
In his book The Wonders of the Work of God, evangelist Robert L. Sumner tell the story of a man who was severely injured in an explosion. The victim lost his eyesight as well as both hands. He was just a new Christian, and one of his greatest disappointments was that he could no longer read the Bible. Then he heard about a lady in England who read braille with her lips. Hoping to do the same, he sent for some books of the Bible in braille. Much to his dismay, however, he discovered that the nerve endings in his lips had been destroyed by the explosion. One day, as he brought one of the braille pages to his lips, his tongue happened to touch a few of the raised characters and he could feel them. Like a flash he thought, I can read the Bible using my tongue. At the time Robert Sumner wrote his book, the man had “read” through the entire Bible four times.

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THE BIBLE?
The new pastor was asked to teach a boys’ class in the absence of the regular teacher. He decided to see what they knew, so he asked who knocked down the walls of Jericho. All the boys denied having done it, and the pastor was appalled by their ignorance. At the next deacons’ meeting he told about the experience. “Not one of them knows who knocked down the walls of Jericho,” he lamented. The group was silent until finally one deacon spoke up. “Pastor, this appears to be bothering you a lot. But I’ve known all those boys since they were born and they’re good boys. If they said they didn’t know, I believe them. Let’s just take some money out of the repair and maintenance fund, fix the walls, and let it go at that.”         (SOURCE UNKNOWN)

HOW MUCH DO YOU VALUE YOUR BIBLE?
It is said that when the famous missionary, Dr. David Livingstone, started his trek across Africa he had 73 books in 3 packs, weighing 180 pounds. After the party had gone 300 miles, Livingstone was obliged to throw away some of the books because of the fatigue of those carrying his baggage. As
he continued on his journey his library grew less and less, until he had but one book left–his Bible. (SOURCE UNKNOWN)

People deal with troubling circumstances every day.  People typically react with a negative attitude to these issues.  Too often  though,  people take  this negative

attitude and make it part of their personality. So, how can we turn our frowns upside down?  We need to learn to be optimistic.  Let’s examine 4 secrets of optimistic people.

1. They Express Gratitude.  Optimistic people rarely talk about what they don’t have; it’s almost always about what they do have. You may not live in your dream house yet, but you can be thankful that you’re not homeless.  You may not drive a BMW, but at least you don’t have to ride the bus to work.  Do you see the point?  Life will NEVER be perfect.  It’s all about how you look at it.  Most people have it worse that we do.  If we want to be optimistic, we need to be thankful for the good we already have, not what we are lacking.

2. They Volunteer.  Optimistic people aren’t focused on themselves.  This is about shifting the focus from ourselves to others.  Just give it a try.  Go help an elderly person with some housework.  Go visit someone who has been sick or is in the hospital.  Studies have shown that people are much more happy and satisfied when they are focusing on helping others and not on their own problems.

3. They Notice the Good.  Optimistic people always seem to look on the bright side.  They are able to find that silver lining.  This isn’t something that comes naturally.  This is one part of optimism that we must practice.  It is very difficult to look for something positive when you are faced with dreadful situations like death, poverty, and sickness.  While it may not appear right away, an optimistic person keeps looking for the positives.

4. They Change Negative Self-Talk.  Optimistic people think positively about themselves.  Typically, when people look in the mirror they begin to pick out all of their flaws, wish they were different, and insult themselves for not being better.  Much of this is spurred on by our culture’s standard for beauty, which is unbelievably distorted.  So, what is the point?  Don’t be so hard on yourself.  No one is flawless.  Focus on the good things and change the negative self-talk into positive thoughts about yourself.

Life is so much better when we focus on the positive side. Consider this, we know that God helps us (Matthew 6:25-34), we know that God protects us (2 Corinthians 1:10), and we know that God causes all things to work together for the good of His will (Romans 8:28).  God provides these blessings because He wants us to be joyful.  He wants us to praise Him for the blessings He provides us with.  There are way too many positives in this life to wallow around in all the negatives.  Let’s learn to be optimistic people.

(BRETT PETRILLO)

When our kids were young, my family and  I went  to a  church while  on  our
summer study break; it was a new church, very small, that was meeting in a movie theatre.  How can I say this…it was one of the most programming challenged services I’ve ever attended.  It was so bad, that we were looking at our watches five minutes after the service started.  When the service mercifully ended, we wanted to get out of there and never return.  I know, that isn’t very gracious and I should have been focused more on worshiping Jesus and … you would have wanted to leave too.

But when we went to pick up our kids, they were having an absolute blast.  They didn’t want to leave!  There was a couple who had just poured themselves into that ministry, and made it really, really good.  I still recall how they had transformed  a meager space into  a
time-machine with special-effects music that took the kids “back” into Bible times. New kids, such as ours, were treated extra special and taken to a treasure chest full of small toys from which they could choose, just for coming the first time.

We went to some of the “best” churches in the area that summer, but our kids pleaded with us to take them back to the one we could barely stand.

Here’s the lesson:  No matter how good the service is, if the children’s ministry is bad, they won’t come back – unless they’re people without children.

Wake up.  Children are the heart of your growth engine.

And if a pre-believer ever were to come to your church uninvited, it would probably be for the sake of their kids.  And if a pre-believer comes because they were invited, what you do with their children will be a deal-breaker.

So I’ll say it again: Your church’s children’s ministry is the most important sub-ministry in the life of your church.

Now, start treating it that way.                                    (DR JAMES EMERY WHITE)