Church Family Update - July 17, 2020

Prayer Concerns:

Please be in prayer for farmers and homeowners who sustained property damage during last night’s storm. In particular, please hold the family of Josh and Nicole in your prayers. Last night their farm incurred significant damage including having most of the roof of their barn torn off. They had to send their cows elsewhere for milking while they repair the damage. 

A Devotional Thought:

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18 

We’ve had an unusual string of annoying circumstances in our home this week. Nothing major. Just one inconvenience piled on the next. Things like our chickens being eaten by foxes, flooding in our basement, losing pressure in our gas line and having to go without hot water and a stove for a week and a few other unwelcome surprises. (If I seemed more awake than usual last Sunday it's because my day began with a cold shower...and it looks like it will again this Sunday!) The latest inconvenience is that the storm Thursday night knocked out our power and it still hasn’t come back on. (So even though I’m writing this on Friday morning, I don’t know when I’ll be able to send it out...*Update: turns out we're sending this on Saturday from my mother-in-law's house--thanks Carolyn!).

This morning as I reflected on these unwelcome hassles, it occurred to me that even though this week has been trying to my patience, there are millions (maybe billions?) of people around the world who would love to have had my week instead of their week. There are people in the world who have real problems. People who have lost loved ones or are wrestling with illness or who are facing unemployment or even starvation. My problems are not even worth comparing to the very real and acute problems that some people face every day. 

And yet, they’re still my problems and I can choose how I respond to them. Friday night as our family was spending time in prayer I began to recount to the Lord all the small things that have gone wrong for our family this week. And as the list continued to stretch on I heard a child snicker and then another and by the time I got to the end of the list we were all laughing out loud. It was just too ridiculous for all those things to go wrong in one week. 

And that reminded me of the verse above. The Lord draws near to us during times of hardship and challenge. Again I want to emphasize that none of the challenges that our family faced this week were a big deal at all. We experienced “first world problems” this week, not real problems. But our challenging week reminded me of the precious promise that God has given us that He will draw near to us when our hearts are broken and our spirits are crushed. 

When we suffer hardship, whether it’s mild or severe, there’s no question that the Lord is near to us. He’s promised to draw near to us in our pain. The question is whether or not we will acknowledge His presence and be blessed by it. So the choice is yours. You can either allow your struggles (both the small ones and the big ones) to draw you closer to God or you can allow your struggles to drive you away from Him. Choose wisely. 

May you be blessed today and may you feel the Lord’s near presence in all your circumstances, especially the hard ones. 

Pastor Jason