Finding God's Path Through Your Trials , livre ebook

Harvest House Publishers, Inc. - George Elizabeth

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

147 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

From bestselling author Elizabeth George (nearly 4 million books sold) comes a book born of her desire to help others through difficult times. Finding God's Path Through Your Trials acknowledges the hard times we all face and reveals how people can "count it all joy," including:understanding trials are not punishmentrealizing God's grace is sufficient to get them through trialsknowing the benefits brought by trialspatience, endurance, empathyexperiencing deeper faith as they depend on God through trialstrusting God to use everything for His gloryEmphasizing God is always with them and will help them every step of the way, Elizabeth reminds readers they will not be given trials they cannot bear without including a way of escape. She encourages people to turn to Jesus, where they will find hope, joy, and meaning in the journey, no matter how bumpy it seems.

Informations

Publié par	Harvest House Publishers, Inc.
Date de parution	01 juillet 2007
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780736931014
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0692€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Unless otherwise indicated all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Verses marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible , 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. ( www.Lockman.org )
Verses marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Verses marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible , New Living Translation, copyright 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189 USA. All rights reserved.
Verses marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Harvest House Publishers has made every effort to trace the ownership of all poems and quotes. In the event of a question arising from the use of a poem or quote, we regret any error made and will be pleased to make the necessary correction in future editions of this book.
Italics in Scripture quotations indicate author s emphasis.
Cover photo Gary Yeowell / Photographer s Choice / Getty Images
Cover by Dugan Design Group, Bloomington, Minnesota
FINDING GOD S PATH THROUGH YOUR TRIALS
Copyright 2007 by Elizabeth George
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
George, Elizabeth, 1944-
Finding God s path through your trials / Elizabeth George.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7369-1374-4 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-7369-1374-2 (pbk.)
1. Suffering-Biblical teaching. 2. Consolation-Biblical teaching. 3. Christian women-Religious life. I. Title.
BS680.S854G46 2007
248.8 6-dc22
2007012043
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 / VP-SK / 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
A Word About Trials
Section 1-Becoming a Joyful Woman
1. Accepting the Truth
2. Using an Easy Sorting System
3. Evaluating What s Happening
4. Expecting Bumps, Roadblocks, and Dead Ends
Section 2-Becoming a Stable Woman
5. Looking for Blessings
6. Changing Your Perspective
7. Strengthening Your Staying Power
8. Standing with the Giants of Faith
Section 3-Becoming a Mature Woman
9. Crossing over to Greatness
10. Making Decisions that Develop Greatness
11. Dealing with Roadblocks
12. Experiencing God s Power and Perfection
Section 4-Becoming a Mighty Woman
13. Finding Strength in God s Grace
14. Counting on God s Power
15. Drawing on God s Might
16. Becoming a Work of Art
Section 5-Becoming an Enduring Woman
17. Enduring Difficult Times
18. There Is Nothing New Under the Sun
19. Trusting in God s Faithfulness
20. Triumphing over Temptation
A Final Word
21. Gaining Something Grand
Notes
Acknowledgments
Finding God s Path Through Your Trials Growth and Study Guide
Personal Notes
Books by Elizabeth George
About the Author
A Word About Trials

A daughter s health and needed brain scan.
A soldier deploying to a war zone.
A couple with a son going through problems.
A suicidal daughter.
A dying dad.
A lack of self-control and/or addiction.
Whether we like it or not, trials and tribulation are part of our everyday lives. I can still remember reading John 16:33 as a new Christian making my way through the New Testament. In words spoken to His disciples, Jesus boldly stated, In the world you will have tribulation. At that time I believed that everything would get better, that being a Christian would surely one day mean a problem-free life. However, the truth is that you and I-and everyone else- will suffer. We live in a sinful, fallen world that involves bodies deteriorating, relationships that require attention, temptation coming from every direction, and relentless persecution of believers because of their testimony for Christ.
As you read through this book, you will encounter some wisdom from the Bible about trials and about how you can approach them. You will also learn how others have handled trials and how their examples-along with God s grace-can help you manage your way through your own set of trials. Regardless of what happens to you along life s way, keep these words from Jesus in your mind and heart. On the heels of His statement regarding the universality of trials and tribulation, Jesus said, Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world (John 16:33).
This is God s good news! Christ s victory, accomplished through His death and resurrection, rendered the world s opposition null and void. Yes, we will suffer, fall, fail, and be attacked. We will experience trials of every magnitude and every length of duration, from being locked out of the car until help arrives to a life-altering trial with no end or change in sight. But Christ s triumph has already guaranteed a smashing defeat of the world and its evil, including our trials.
As we talk about finding God s path through your trials, keep these words from the apostle Paul handy in your heart:
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57).
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Romans 8:37).
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
Section 1
Becoming a Joyful Woman
Life need not be easy to be joyful. Joy is not the absence of trouble, but the presence of Christ . 1
W ILLIAM V ANDER H OVEN
Becoming a Joyful Woman

1 Accepting the Truth

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials .
James 1:2
Have you ever been asked to do something you weren t too excited about? Something that might even cause some pain physically, mentally, or emotionally? Probably fairly often, right? Well, that happened to me one summer morning. One of my phone calls that sunny day was from the woman who chaired the women s ministry at my family s church. She asked me to pray about teaching the women s Bible study group the following spring. And not only was she asking me to pray about leading the group, but she actually gave me the topic of the Bible study- trials of all things! Her committee had discussed the needs among women in the church and decided that the topic of successfully handling trials would be important since so many were experiencing difficulties in some form or another.
Well, little did these ladies know, but their request quickly became a trial in my life. Why, you ask? Read on!
My first response to this woman, I m sorry to say, was negative. I don t like to teach by assignment. I much prefer to instruct out of the overflow of my own personal study of the Bible.
My second response, I m also sorry to say, was fear. Who would want to attend a class that majored on problems? Don t most people want to hear pleasant, happy things? I certainly didn t want to be a teacher of doom and gloom!
But as I talked it over with God, He changed my heart. I accepted the opportunity as coming from Him that He was asking me to address the everyday, every-person exposure to trouble, and that He had some things to teach me. The church committee was indeed wise: Trials are part of life, including mine and yours.
Looking to Another Teacher
Once I worked through the trial of doing something I wasn t sure I wanted to do and accepted the challenge of diving into the topic of trials, my mind raced to James, the writer of the book of James in the Bible. I thought James might have had a similar experience because he taught about trials.
Imagine yourself in James position. He was given an assignment to teach a course that could have been entitled Trials 101. Knowing that all Christians suffer, the president of the college- God Himself-asked James to create curriculum that would give all Christians the basics needed for handling bad times.
Oh, but that s not all! James was essentially told the class would have to be a correspondence course. Why? Because he would never meet or talk to the people who needed and studied this course designed to help them manage their problems and challenges. Therefore James assignment was to write instructions that were universal-that would help in any and every situation for all time. He was to put in writing information that would aid any and every Christian, from the babe in Christ facing initial growing pains to the seasoned saint on his or her deathbed. He was to communicate guidelines that would instruct God s people in how to handle everything from a small insult to a major catastrophe.
What would you do if you were James? What would you say? Where would you start? My friend, this is exactly the assignment God gave to James. There were some saints out there who needed help. Jewish believers living outside Jerusalem and Palestine, outside the hub of Christianity, were confronting a variety of trials. James job was to give them advice on how to deal with their problems in a godly way.
And what were the results of God s assignment to James? Here are a few facts surrounding James timeless lessons to all believers on how to find God s path through trials.
Getting Straight to the Point
To begin, the book of James is the first New Testament epistle (letter) written, dated just 15 years after the death of Christ. It is a bold, straight-to-the-point, practical manual on holy living under any and all conditions-including distress. Filled with wisdom, the epistle of James has been likened to the book of Proverbs because of its short, ra