All posts tagged: Trusting God

The key to optimism

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A recent study conducted by several researchers from Canada and the U.S. has concluded that optimists live longer, the Washington Post reports. The study came to this conclusion after tracking 160,000 women between the ages of 50 and 79 for 26 years. At the beginning of the study, the women completed a self-analysis that measured their optimism, with those scoring the highest considered optimists and those on the lower end of the scale, pessimists. In 2019, the researchers then conducted a follow-up study with those who were still alive and also determined the ages at which the remainder had died. While accounting for other factors that contribute to a longer life span, such as economic well-being and ethnicity, the researchers found that those who scored high on the optimist scale lived longer than those who didn’t. Optimists were also more likely to live into their nineties, which the researchers described as ‘exceptional longevity” considering the average life span for women in their study was 83 years. Another study, conducted by researchers from Rochester University in …

What About God?

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My first sermon was in an established downtown church. I think there were probably close to two hundred people. My sermon was titled, “The Family that Forgot God.” This was back in 1984 I believe. Thirty-six years have passed, and the world has changed so drastically since then. The division and hatred weren’t so strong then. We argued fiercely about politics, religion, and human rights, but we didn’t burn down neighborhoods or attack each other. I don’t even think we cancelled anyone back then. We may have hated it, but we put up with each other. And some things are still the same. Back in the Eighties, we had a recession. Interest rates skyrocketed. People lost their jobs and their homes. Society in North America became even more divided, especially between the rich and the not-so-rich.   The biggest thing that is the same is our need for God. God never changes. Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” In a world in which change is rapid and destructive, …

Entering the void

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If you are like me, you want the comfortableness of certainty in your life. And over these past few months that has been completely shattered, I have said ‘we will get through this’ to myself and others too many times. Often, when we enter a desert time, familiarity is stripped away and uncertainty becomes our ‘new normal’. This season has several names, the unknown, the void or the desert. Yes, we can get through this, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that things will be better. It may also be different from what you were expecting. If you are counting on certainty, this fleeting hope could ruin your life. There is a risk that comes with living and instead of constantly fighting it, we need to go with it. It’s the tension of the unknown and realizing that nothing is for certain that keeps us alert and alive. This is where God’s grace needs to become our ‘new normal.’  Getting through these times, requires us to recognize the tension that grace holds for us. Grace holds …

Is eternity in your heart?

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Recently my niece, who has been dealing with cancer for the past two years, sent me this text: “In my dark times, I cry and ask for help but overall I am just trying to put one step in front of the other, trust in God and be grateful for each day. That is all I can do and need to do.” Afterwards, I thought that is really all any of us can do, whether we are dealing with a life threatening illness like my niece or day to day stuff such as kids and money we need to put our confidence in God. When we worry about tomorrow, our future remains unsettled in our hearts.  The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that God “has set eternity in their heart.”  One meaning for ‘eternity’ is future. There is a God-given awareness inside each of us that there is more to life than what we are currently experiencing in this unstable world. This verse says humans operate differently because we have a sense of this eternity …

Credit: Sasha Tamarin/Flickr/Creative Commons

Your Martha Meltdown Moment Part 2: Broken Glass

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This is my meltdown moment. In the 80s and early 90s I worked in the private security sector. My goal was to be hired with the city police, and I had taken a number of policing/security courses to that end. Being a cop was my dream, not God’s, or my wife’s. I did not hear God say “yes” or “no” to my dream, but He let me scratch my itch for a time. But in December 1990 everything changed. I was working as a loss prevention officer in a large department store. It was a busy Saturday two weeks before Christmas. I watched a tall male pick up a Nintendo unit, put it under his arm and walk out of the store into the attached mall. I started after him, he saw me coming, and dropped the game. I stepped over the Nintendo, still chasing him, and seeing me follow him, he ran full speed out of the back door of the mall. I was starting to catch up to him as he ran out …

Rusty car in Bodie, California Credit: Wolfgang Staudt/Flickr/Creative Commons

Your Martha Meltdown Moment Part 1: Rusty Dreams

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Trusting God at times can be a real challenge, especially when your dreams seem to have turned to rust.   We all go through dark times when we must verbalize two things: God is Lord, and He is good. I will trust Him even when I don’t understand and it seems too late – the rust is too far gone! Psalm 42:10 says, “My enemies reproach me, while they say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” During these dark times the enemy loves to use people to taunt us, questioning, “If God really loves you He would not have allowed these things to happen. Where is God?” To answer, we can leave the Bible open to the book of Job. God is God, and He is good! If my dreams seem to have turned to rust, and I picture the word “rust”, and bring the cross into the picture, right at the beginning, we now have the word, “trust.” It’s always about trust. We walk by faith, full stop. Ask yourself, “Is this …