Tag: Jesus Christ

By Pastor Andrew Farland

We don’t draw closer to Christ when everything is going well.

That’s too easy.

We draw closer to Christ when things are complicated and seemingly impossible.

There’s a peculiar dichotomy that happens in seasons of trial. It’s the most beautiful time in your life. In the times of greatest tribulation and uncertainty, you are the most connected to Christ. You’re the most dependent on Him. You’re learning and growing, and you are receiving God’s love more than any other time.

When you find yourself in a storm, you are in a place where you can’t do it on your own anymore, and you need God more than ever.

The key here is that a season of trial and tribulation can do for you what a season of ease cannot do.

Seasons of trial develop character. They help you grow in empathy, and they give you deeper compassion for others. God uses these times to develop a ministry inside you so that you can help other people who suffer what you’re experiencing.

Trials force you to have a deeper life in Christ, one that’s rooted soundly in Him.

What happens to you is similar to the growth of a palm tree.

When the wind blows against the palm tree, it neither breaks nor uproots. The gales force the tree to dig deeper and push its roots far into the ground. The tree entrenches itself in a strong foundation of permanence.

Something similar happens during the most difficult seasons of your life.

When you face hurricanes in your life, your roots in Christ deepen. Difficulty sends the roots deeper into the soil. With Christ, you will bend but never break.

Easy times don’t do you much good for growth. You’ll never grow and never achieve resilience.

The seasons of difficulty and trial take us to a dark place in our lives, much like having to pass through a tunnel. The good thing is that we’re never alone in these dark moments. We realize God isn’t only at the end of the tunnel. He’s right there in the midst of it with us.

We cry out for God in the darkness, and we ask for His saving power. That’s when we see Him come through for us. Real faith and spiritual endurance grow when the storm hits and the sky is at its darkest.

It’s weird is that when you emerge from the storm, and you leave the dark and hard season behind you, you’ll feel like something is missing. You miss the intimacy and the close relationship with God. God came through for you. During your tribulation, He revealed himself to you.

Now, when everything is easy once again, you forget to pray to God. You forget that God is all-powerful because you think you can do it on your own. You let the close bonds slip a bit.

How beautiful to go through this tough season with God. Seek God and receive His blessings. See Him come through for you and with you over and over. His presence produces unshakeable hope.

God tells us in Romans 5: 3-5 that perseverance produces hope.

3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

If you need real unshakable hope in your life, you must go through the storm, the blessed storm. Most people want to cast away the wind and the rain, escaping the unpleasant times. You need the hard times to grow, get rooted, and trust in God.

You’ll want to get through the difficult periods in your life as quickly as possible, but you’ll also miss them. It’s like raising kids.

Raising two- and three-year-olds isn’t an easy job. You want your kids to grow up fast because you’d like to experience a full night’s sleep once again. You want to be able to touch a surface in your house that isn’t sticky, and wouldn’t it be great if you could go one whole month without anyone getting a runny nose or a fever?

Yet, when your kids grow up and move out of the house, you miss them so much. You realize the difficult years were among the most beautiful times in your life.

Don’t curse the difficult times.

Those difficult times in your life are pure joy. Welcome them by changing your perspective to see seasons of trial as an opportunity rather than a challenge. They make you stronger emotionally, spiritually, and in your relationship with God.

If you are to experience suffering and God’s glory, be willing to open your heart to whatever God wants to give you. The Lord gives and takes away. Like Job says, “Blessed be the name of the Lord. Naked I came and naked I will go.”

God blesses you in every season, but you’re even more blessed in difficult seasons because you’re growing and maturing. Continue to push your roots deeply into the foundation that is Christ.

Colossians 2: 6-7
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

Be encouraged today because God is with you.

By Pastor Andrew Farland

When I was going through one of the hardest times in my life, one of the most loving things anyone could do for me was to provide a safe place to land.

One night I had a panic attack, I was nervous and scared – completely beyond the point of being able to handle it on my own. It was the worst panic attack I had ever had. I was with a friend, but he had to leave me. I didn’t want to be alone because I didn’t feel okay.

I had two options:

Go to the emergency room to calm the panic attack. Just thinking about it made me crazy. Admitting that I was sick enough to go to the emergency room would be like going insane. Going to the hospital meant a new level of brokenness, and that was unacceptable.

Go to a small group meeting that had been scheduled to start in half an hour. I didn’t want to show this broken side, but it seemed better than going to the hospital.

My friend recommended I go to the small group meeting, and he left. I took his advice and went.

I arrived with no emotion, just a blank stare. I was a shell of myself.

The group leader Veronica said, “Hey Andrew, I know you’re going through a hard time. We don’t expect anything from you. Just stay here with us and be yourself.” She suggested that I could sit on the couch while the group met at the table, and I was welcome to join them – or not.

The group sat at the table, and I stayed on the couch with her dog. I stared at the wall, not sure what to think. All I knew for sure was that I was broken beyond repair, and I had no idea how to fix myself.

The upside was that I had a friend who expected nothing from me. She let me just be with her and the small group.

It reminded me that the greatest way to love is to be welcoming. To be a safe place to land.

I planned to go home after the meeting even though I knew it wasn’t a smart move. Veronica insisted I stay with them for the next couple of days.

Veronica showed me that love is meeting others at their point of need, not making demands of them. The way to take care of others is by being available. It’s not about throwing out advice. It’s not about offering a blanketed statement.

Go to the person in need. Meet them where they are rather than make them come to you. You need no agenda.

If we’re going to change the world, it will be like that. You don’t need to join a program, pay a fee or take a drug.

Open love – the love of God– is beautiful, and it’s a safe place to land.

1 Peter 4:8
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

Be encouraged today because God is with you.

By Pastor Andrew Farland

Our God is a God of redemption.

He saves us from ourselves.

Before Jesus was crucified, Peter denied Christ three times. Peter was the same guy who commanded God to come out of the boat and walk on water. It was Peter who said, “I will never turn away from you even if everyone else does.” He was full of zeal, and yet Christ had to teach him a couple of different lessons.

The number one lesson Peter had to learn is:

Your own zeal can’t save you. Your own power can’t save you. You need the power of Christ, the redemption of Jesus.

Peter denied Christ three times, but then Peter started Jesus’s church and lead 3,000 people back to Christ on Pentecost.

You see, whatever you’ve done can be forgiven.

But God needs to teach us a lesson that we are not supposed to work out of our own sufficiency. We can’t do it on our own. We need to rely on God.

We are not redeemed by our power and might, but by His spirit.

Rely on the spirit of Christ inside. God can redeem us, grow us, and He can forgive us.

God is the one who shows us that He is the source of power in our lives.

Every time we go through something different; we need to rely on him because no two situations and no two battles are the same. We need to rely on God who knows the exact strategy for what we’re going through.

Rely on God for your sufficiency, not on yourself.

Zechariah 4:6
So he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.

Be encouraged today because God is with you.

By Pastor Andrew Farland

God can reach you at the lowest possible place, even in your deepest sorrow, with no hope in sight.

I had an experience in Rwanda that showed this.

We were working with a bunch of kids who wanted to explore the ministry.

When we split into teams, my team had five people including me. Right away, one boy and one girl left us, and we became a team of three. We still wanted to go door to door that morning to pray with people and for them.

The team knocked on the first and second doors, and we continued making our way down the street. We finally arrived at the last door on the end of the street. A young girl invited them in. Even with our translator helping, there wasn’t much talking. Everyone prayed together, and we left.

The next day, we went back to the same community. Our translator ran up to us, saying, “You’re not going to believe what happened. It’s crazy!”

“Tell us!” I said. “We love to be encouraged!”

“Remember the last house at the end of the street?” asked our translator. “The night before you came, the lady you prayed with put a rope around the top of the beam in her ceiling, and laid the noose around her neck.

She heard a voice say, “Don’t kill yourself; help is on the way.”

The translator continued. “Then she had a vision of three white people coming to pray for her. But wait, It gets crazier. In the vision, she saw your faces — one girl, and two boys — coming to the door.”

This story illustrates that you might be at the end of the road and at the end of your rope, ready to give up.

But don’t.

God is there, putting the right people in place to help you. God did this in Rwanda for the woman who contemplated suicide.

He gave her a vision of three white people who would come and pray with her. He sent away two members of the five-member team so only the envisioned prayer warriors would be left. Everything fit perfectly in God’s plan. He made it so.

You see, God shows us that there ways where there are no ways. Life and hope exist where there is death and hopelessness.

We discovered on our next trip to the area that all three of the lady’s prayer requests had been answered.

God will help you with yours!

Isaiah 42:13
“For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand
and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.

Be encouraged today because God is with you.