Today, Pastor Ford will challenge us today to consider these questions—Can you worship Jesus, even when you don’t get what you want? Even if you don’t get the job, if the sickness isn’t healed, if you never get a husband, if you never get a wife, or if your children never come back from “the far country”?  Like Job, can you still say, “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord?”

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do you do when Jesus doesn’t do what you want, how you want and when you want?  Today, Pastor Ford will point out that the mother we meet in Matthew 15 decided she was going to go beyond her expectation.  She expected Jesus to help her, but He was silent in that moment. So, she began an exercise in faith by deciding to sit and wait for Him to respond. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When we see a brother or sister in need of spiritual correction, we first need to take time to pray and really think about the best, most positive way to speak words of correction or words of rebuke to them.  We need to do it in the right spirit, and not permit ourselves to get upset when we don’t get the response that we think we should get or that the Bible says we should get from them. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who do you go to when you have a problem?  Is the fact that Jesus is ready to help you with anything you need something that you remember in your time of need?  As we begin a new study in Matthew 15, Pastor Ford will introduce us to a woman who had an audacious faith and believed that Jesus was the only One Who could help her. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pastor Ford will challenge us today to consider the need we have to understand how our problems and pain can be motivating factors in our lives. Even though we go through difficulties, they can motivate us to live in our “not yet,” right now.  In other words, we can focus right now on the hope we have in our future with Jesus, instead of dwelling on our current situation.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When we face problems and pain in life, we need to understand that what we’re going through is for the future that we’re going to. That struggle is a part of making us who we’re going to become and it is designed to accomplish God’s purpose for our lives.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pastor Ford will remind us today that sometimes the solution to our problem is in our problem.  In other words, our deficiency—which is apparent to us in our problem—may be the provision for the sufficiency that God wants to provide for us.  But often, we can’t easily see the truth about our situation. So, we must learn to trust God more fully for the outcome.  

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we continue to consider how to see purpose in our problems and pain, Pastor Ford will explain the various kinds of suffering we can encounter.  One of those is remedial suffering, and God uses it much like a potter uses heat to cure his clay.  So, it’s during those times when God uses suffering to burn character into us that cannot be changed, to burn compromise out of our life, and to burn off the carnality from our behavior—all of those adjustments help us resemble Christ and not the world.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we continue to look at how we should treat our brothers and sisters in Christ, we’re going to take a closer look at meekness. When someone is meek, it means that they have strength under control. Pastor Ford will explain that God delights in people who are meek. And God wants to use people in their meekness to restore the things that are broken around them.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

God has sent us the trials we are experiencing in our lives, and He wants us to see them in the way that He sees them.  And that’s because He’s shaping us to make us into something that we currently are not. And why is He doing that?   Because in the current shape we’re in, God won’t give us what He ultimately does want to give us, when we have eventually been conformed to His will.  

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.