Sometimes, you have to go through the rain to see the blessings. Sometimes, you have to fish all night before Jesus tells you to throw your nets on the other side. Then after He has been in the tomb for three days and you are out on the water all night once again, with your faith wounded and your hearts broken and a man on the shore tells you to throw your nets one more time, and you know it’s Jesus, so you fling yourself over the side of the boat, knowing that you can walk on the water of He is with you. You grab Him and cry.
Sometimes, God will remind you of your first act of faith when you are in your hardest moments, so you remember how He answered you.

John 21:4-7 ESV
[4] Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. [5] Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” [6] He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. [7] That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea.

Luke 5:3-7 ESV
[3] Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. [4] And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” [5] And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” [6] And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. [7] They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.
Sometimes we go through the pains of a suffering we do not understand and we never truly see the reason. Sometimes we suffer and then see what God created through it. Sometimes our blessings cause our suffering. Sometimes our struggles do. But no matter what causes the pain, God has a purpose and will save you. No matter how you feel in the moment, don’t forget, ever, that God is good. He will never cause anything to happen to you that He does not plan to bring you out of, and many times He will bring something great of you.
Perhaps you will not become the deciple upon which God builds His church, like Peter.
Perhaps you will not be upright and righteous beyond any other in the Land, like Job.
But God, will bring you out and bring something great out of you!
Trust Him! He is always on your side.

I’ve got my own giants.

We had a pastor who used to say that you need to get out of only praying for yourself. But that’s hard. We pray for other people’s problems, but we become distracted by our own problems. Our giants are big too.
We worry over ourselves because we are on the frontline of our own lives. We don’t feel what others feel, but we definitely feel what we feel. Then, one day, a person goes through what you have been through, and you pray harder for that person than for any of the others because you understand. You have met their giants, and you know how awful they are. Sometimes, God let’s us go through things so we are prepared from the battle to help others with their battle. Perhaps God knows that we have the strength to endure with only Him, and the person we will meet will need a physical hand to hold. It’s what is grown in the battle that makes us who we are. But we get to choose if anything grows. Do we turn to binge watching TV? I know I do more than I should. Do we turn to friends? What is your escape plan for when the fight comes?
It is when we turn to Jesus that we grow. When we say, “I’m fighting through this because God is on my side!”
We say that you can do anything you put your mind to, but the fact is no, you can’t. There are things you can not do on your own. But there is nothing that God can not do. It’s when you give the battle to Him and follow behind His sword and shield that you see victory. We have our own giants. But don’t go saying that your sling and stone won the fight because you were a great shot. Or because you had better technology than the dead champion who had won countless battles and most likely met fighters as good as you and sling shots as fast and powerful. When you walk away from the fight, know it’s because God walked with you into the fight. Your giants are big. But your God is bigger.

Even flowers have days when they are tired. Even the strong and resilient daisy has times when her petals droop.
Whenever a hard time comes, I think of the verse in Matthew that says
Matthew 6:28-30 ESV
[28] And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, [29] yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. [30] But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
But there are days when even the flowers look tired. They have no though or feeling, yet circumstances make them droop. We we think when we come to know jesus that all of the hardship will be gone and will never suffer again.But that’s just not the way it is. We forget that we have an enemy and that our enemy is like a prowling lion and will attack and devour. We feel like if we were just a little bit more diligent, if we just prayed a little harder, maybe we we’d be better off.Emprayer does help but hard times will come.Because God has warned us that they will come. The earlier verse ends with, “O you of little faith.” Whenever we listen to the Bible read aloud, the speaker will more often than not quote the O you little faith versus with an angry tone or a disappointed tone. But I don’t think that that’s what jesus is saying, when he warns us of having a small faith, it’s not because he’s mad that our faith is still small and it’s not necessarily because he’s disappointed, he knew we would have a small faith.Why else would he have said with faith like a mustard seed. When I read Jesus saying you of little faith. I hear it with a tone of that of somebody correcting perhaps a small dog. I’ve had this experience with my own dog where he will do something and I will try and help him or stop him or save him. And he will fight against me, and then he will hurt himself and i’m not mad at him, but I will say, why wouldn’t you have just trusted me and listened to me?Then you would’ve been fine. That’s what I hear when jesus says you of little faith. You of little faith, if only you would have trusted me.If only you would listen to me, I can help you and take your anxiety, your fear and your pain away. Jesus is called.
He is our peace.
Jehovah Shalom.
When the monsters come around at night, it’s Jesus who protects us. It is because of him, we lie down in safety. That doesn’t mean there won’t be times when something evil crashes through your gate. I recall a great missionary speaking on a time when he was in.I believe it was africa, but it might have been india. He was sleeping in a tent like they all did, and in the middle of the night he woke up with a crazy need to pray and he spent the entire evening lying in his bed, praying the blood of jesus, the blood of Jesus. In the morning, he woke up and there was a deep trench around his bed, and if I recall what he said correctly, he said the lord spoke to me and said the devil came to attack you.But because you spoke, my name, all he could do was pace.Around you all night. It’s only in the blood of Jesus that we are safe and protected. The devil can come, but he can’t get through when we are covered in the blood of Jesus. Gods angel, that’s swept through and took the first born child in Egypt. It was the blood on the door that made it so that the angel passed that house by. There will be times later on where the same people who had been under that blood would then doubt God or deny God and maybe some of them were ones that were killed in the desert by disease or by the sword because of the way they had turned from Jesus and God knew full well when his angel passed. Them by. That they would turn from him later and that they would possibly die in the desert, but it was still the blood of Jesus, the blood of the lamb on the door now, I should specify that that’s symbolic and not every lamb’s blood is the blood of Jesus, however, God still permitted those people to be. Left to live when his spirit went through because of the blood on the door. The blood did not blind him to who was inside. He knew full well and he also knew what the outcome would be later, but the blood of Jesus protects you. It’s once you let go of his hand release the hem of his garment and are no longer washed in his blood, but then the monsters can come through. But while you are with him and you have him by your side. And you trust him and love him and speak to him daily. The monsters might show up, but god will give you a safe place where they cannot get at you and that safe place.He’s in the palm of his hand. I speak of monsters, but what is a monster? The monster might be the new diagnosis from your doctor the monster might be the terrible thoughts or horrifying dreams that come in the middle of the night. The monster might be an addiction. The monster might be a person. The monster might be a fear or even a desire. And they will come because the devil doesn’t want you belonging to his enemy. But Jesus is your friend and he is fighting on your side, and he will never let you go.