Category Archives: God with us

Unanswered prayers

Reverend Daniel Hans wrote about a sermon he preached following the death of his three-year-old daughter to cancer. His heart broke as he watched her slowly die, so he asked his congregation to share things they’d hoped God would do … Continue reading

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‘Jesus, this is Jim.’

Bruce Howell used to tell the story of Jim, a Londoner who, every day at Noon, would slip into a church where he would sit quietly for five minutes and then depart. The minister of that church got to recognise … Continue reading

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God’s ‘endless breach of contract’

Broadcaster Phillip Adams, in the Weekend Australian, once referred to the perceived failure of God to answer the prayers of desperate people as ‘this endless breach of contract, this failure to honour the guarantee.’ I think the failure is in … Continue reading

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God who suffers with us

When disaster strikes we often ask why God doesn’t do something.Tim Keller reported that after the Nine-Eleven tragedy, eight hundred new people began attending his Manhattan church and most wanted to know what God had to say about it. Keller … Continue reading

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The kiss of understanding

The great pianist Paderewski once went to hear a friend’s daughter give a piano recital. But when the little girl saw the great man in the audience, she got stage fright, forgot her piece and broke down in tears. At … Continue reading

Posted in Compassion, Encouragement, God with us, understanding | Leave a comment

Trouble is inevitable, but misery is optional

Abraham Lincoln is credited with the saying that ‘most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.’ Now, that may be an oversimplification, especially when we think of refugees fleeing from unimaginable horrors, or people … Continue reading

Posted in Endurance, Faith, Faithfulness, God with us, God's faithfulness, God's love, Trials and testings, tribulation and trouble | Leave a comment

Incarnation

When he came to the throne in 1999, King Abdullah of Jordan caused great consternation amongst his staff by disguising himself as a taxi driver and driving a cab around Amman. He did it so that he could mingle with … Continue reading

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Unconquerable hope

Booth Tucker was a Salvation Army officer in Chicago. One evening he preached a sermon about the sympathy of Jesus. Afterwards a man said to him, ‘If your wife had just died, like mine has, and your babies were crying … Continue reading

Posted in Death, Despair, Faith, God with us, Grace, Heaven, Hope, Hope of Glory | Leave a comment

A fifth-rate planet revolving around a tenth-rate sun

Earth has been described as ‘a fifth-rate planet revolving around a tenth-rate sun in the forgotten corner of the universe.’ The more we learn about the immensity of Space the tinier and more insignificant our part of the Universe seems … Continue reading

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‘Remember in the darkness what you knew in the light.’

Many of us have had the experience of waking up in the early hours of the morning and finding ourselves overwhelmed with fear and negative thoughts. Those early hours are when our natural rhythms are at their lowest point in … Continue reading

Posted in Faith, Fear, Feelings, God, God with us, God's faithfulness, God's love, Hope, Storms of life, Trials and testings | Leave a comment