ENCOURAGING WORDS

It was so nice to worship and sing with friends last Saturday morning at Capitol Hill Seventh Day Adventist Church. As usual, the message, preached by Pastor Gene Donaldson, was encouraging and relevant. 

I figured I'd better save the notes I wrote all over the bulletin while I can still decipher them:

1. Your challenge is a stanza in your song. You might as well sing it."

2.  There are some things in this life that you are going to have to go through by yourself.

3. How in the world can you know that you know, that you know that you know, that you know that you know, that you know that you know, without going through a storm--and surviving?

4. Human rationalization will always annul God's revelation.

5. Compromise is relief from something, but to get deliverance you've got to go through something.

6. Stop expecting everybody to go through everything with you.

7. Whatever crisis is cornering you; whatever test you are facing, it's there by divine permission--not to defeat you but to develop you. If God has permitted you to go in it, that's a tell-tale sign that he's designed a way for you to get through.

8. In God's construct, the worse thing that will ever happen to you will not be the last thing.

9. When you have navigated hardship and danced through difficulty, the good news is that you were never alone. God is present; God is near; God is there.

10. God is so awesome, that he can make the very people who got you in the mess have to use their resources to get you out.