Hope for Today / February 28

If you have a ministry, any ministry, be thankful that God has so blessed your life. Some places God sends us are fraught with difficulty. Others are for a short season. Few find themselves in a long-term life of ease in ministry, whether they are filling a pulpit or filing in the church office.

God uses the hard times to perfect us. He uses the short seasons to augment our experience. He uses pain to get our undivided attention. He uses a few unlikable characters to knock off our own rough edges. The fact of the matter is that God’s hand is leading those He has called through the darkness, through the rain, through the trouble, through the pain, through the laughter, through the tears, through the hour or through the years. God is intimately involved in our lives. How can we fail to see the power and wonder of it all?

Ministry and mumbling are strange bedfellows. Our complaints undermine the very foundation that God wants to build through us. Whining is a sure sign that tawdry circumstances have drawn us away from His glory. Paul endured the prisons and stripes maintaining an attitude of gratitude.

You have been counted as faithful by God. You have been called to ministry. Don’t stoop to be a king.

“I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service,”

‭‭1 Timothy‬ ‭1‬:‭12‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬