Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Patience”
Our Bible verse for today: “You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, whose thoughts are fixed on you!” Isaiah 26:3 (NLT)
Our thought for today: “Life isn’t perfect, but the peace of God is.”
Please note that in Isaiah 26:3 God does not promise to make life perfect, only that He will create a sense of perfect peace for the one who trusts in Him and who keeps his thoughts fixed on Him. This is an important distinction because life is not perfect and it never will be. We live in a broken and bleeding world filled with sin and disease, broken relationships and lost jobs. There is anger and anguish, trouble and tears, sorrow and suffering.
Unfortunately all too often we expect all our problems to get fixed. We expect the sickness to be healed, the kids to be better behaved, the excess pounds to melt away, and that strange noise the car is making to just stop all by itself because we don’t have the money right now for an expensive repair.
But life isn’t like that. Many times the problems don’t get fixed and instead, we have to learn to live with them. Just look in the Bible. Which Bible character lived a perfect and carefree life? None of them. Loved ones got sick, suffered, and died. Families fought. Enemies attacked. Fortunes were lost. Crops failed. And people suffered.
The Good News of the Gospel doesn’t eliminate the problems of life, but it does empower us to live at peace within the midst of those problems. That’s what Isaiah was teaching in the verse above. The message of the Gospel is most powerful, and most powerfully experienced, in the middle of the brokenness of life.
Have patience with the issues of life. The things you are dealing with are no different from the things that everyone else is dealing with. It’s just life. Some of it is going to get better in time. But some of it probably won’t and you’ll just have to learn to live with it. The good news is that if you keep your eyes on Jesus, if you look to Him as your source of peace and strength, you can find peace that surpasses all understanding.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 