Category: Words of Wisdom

There Are Rays of Hope Even In Our Darkest Hours

God has never led me through a difficulty in which there is no resulting joy that far surpasses the difficulty I’ve been through.

Are you going through a difficulty that seems so hard you’re wondering if you’d ever make it through? Do you feel you’ve already done your best, that you have fought so hard already and still the battle seems so far from being won?

Perhaps you’ve been hurt by another. Or perhaps you’ve lost someone so close to you that you wonder how you’d ever live your days again.

Take heart for you are never alone. In your darkest hours, in your weakest, you’d find the strength you need to carry on. In the most hopeless of situations, a helping hand will be with you, and things will turn around in such a way as to make the most depressing of circumstances in your favor.

Try not to think of the many days ahead, think only of today. Think only of the moment. In this blessed moment, you have God with you, embracing you, whispering unto you: I have always loved you, my child. That is all that matters.

Every difficult task that comes across your path – every one that you would rather not do, that will take the most effort, cause the most pain, and be the greatest struggle – brings a blessing with it. And refusing to do it regardless of the personal cost is to miss the blessing. – Streams in the Desert

It is through the most difficult trials that God often brings the sweetest discoveries of Himself.

How Do You Measure The Success of Your Efforts?

How do we measure the success of our efforts? How do we know whether we have truly accomplished our goals? By the quantity of our output? By the quality of our work performance? By the timeliness and speed with which we have finished the task?

Certainly we have learned to measure our success by the above means. We measured it by the measure that was expected of us, either by our previous classroom teachers when we were young, or by our bosses when we began our Corporate endeavors.

How have you faired so far? Have you met all their expectations? Have you stressed yourself out in trying to do so? If you were your own boss, how would you measure your own success?

What If You Were Your Own Boss?

If we were our own boss, we’d probably be more lenient with ourselves, don’t you think? We’d probably use other measures like the effect of our work upon others, or how lives were changed, and how hearts were touched along the way by the work that we did.

Even then, don’t you think we’d still feel frustrated at times? Don’t you think you’d feel as though you weren’t doing enough, and that people aren’t responding to whatever it is you’re doing? In the end, we may actually be using a far higher measure for our success if we were our own boss!

Is There Another Measure?

True, you might say. But you may ask, is there any other measure?

I believe that there is, and that measure is LOVE.

It is therefore not in the effect of our works that we begin to measure ourselves, but in the very act of working, of working with love. How much love have you put in your work? How much passion? For if we were truly passionate with our works, the act of doing them would be a reward in itself, we would seek no other.

God uses the same measure. He doesn’t measure whether your efforts have resulted in more people being blessed, or in more hearts being healed. He can take care of all that! What God wants from you is your honesty and your unquestionable dedication and faith to the mission He has given you. Can anything be simpler than that?

Do ordinary things with extraordinary love.
-Mother Teresa

Do You Need a Backup Plan?

Common sense dictates that we should have a backup plan, a Plan B, or even Plan C, if Plan A doesn’t work out.  But what I’m going to say may surprise you.  Success often comes when there is no backup plan!

First of all, I’m not advising you to be careless.  And I would like to make it clear that this is a very unique perspective I’m giving you, not the USUAL one.  But it’s something that has worked for me, and for others as well.

In Napoleon Hill’s book THINK AND GROW RICH, he narrated a story about a warrior who had to eradicate all backup plans when faced with an almost impossible challenge:

³ Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him. ⁴ When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.

⁵ Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. ⁶ He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: ⁷ We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.”

⁸ His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.

²³ So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing— ²⁴ and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.  (Genesis 37)

You might have experienced it. God gave you a vision of a wonderful future. You felt blessed. You felt you had everything. You’ve got the world in the palm of your hands.

Then suddenly, a catastrophic change happens. You lose everything you have. You’re alienated even from your own home. You lose your riches. You lose your freedom. You lose everything you have held on to and gave you happiness. Why must such things happen?

My friend, when such things happen, know that God isn’t cursing you. God isn’t taking good things away from you by whim, but because of His higher wisdom.

Joseph had to lose everything so he may know whom to really trust. Joseph had to know he was blessed not because he was handsome or favoured or good. Joseph was blessed because of God’s grace alone. And when everything seem to have been taken away from him, he learns such things are not as important as his faith in God, for God alone has the power to give him all blessings, and to bring back more than what was lost.

In that way, your joy is secured. Nothing of real value could ever be taken away from you, for in God, you will always have everything you need.

⁴ Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! ⁵ And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. ⁶ For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. ⁷ But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

⁸ “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. ⁹ Now hurry back to my father and say to him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay. (Genesis 45)

Just wanted to share a video recommended by a friend entitled WHY WORRY by Andy Stanley .