2 corinthians on Hardship

Given life’s unpredictability and the inevitability of pain and hardship, what do we do when that pain and hardship show up on our doorsteps? In roughly AD 270, there was a man in Lower Egypt named An...

A. Parnell Bailey visited an orange grove where an irrigation pump had broken down. The season was unusually dry and some of the trees were beginning to die for lack of water. The man giving the tour ...

Notes on the Passage Besieged from All Angles:  The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Ja...

Experiencing God’s Goodness through Giving I’ve seen God provide for my family and me in some remarkable ways throughout the past year. I know that many of us lost a lot during Covid, and I don’t mak...

Preaching Commentary Experiencing God’s Goodness through Giving I’ve seen God provide for my family and me in some remarkable ways throughout the past year. I know that many of us lost a lot during ...

Preaching Commentary Besieged from All Angles The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Jar...

Regarding Ash Wednesday Note: This passage appeared as part of the lectionary for Ash Wednesday. It starts with the gospel passage for that day, but   attends to the other passages and themes, so it...

Excursus on Ash Wednesday The Meaning of Ashes Ashes represent many things. The heaped up ashes in a hearth may indicate the benefit of warmth on a cold winter’s night. The charred remains of a per...

Adversity is not simply a tool. It is God's most effective tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. The circumstances and events that we see as setbacks are oftentimes the very things that...

Having hope is hard; harder when you get older.

Adversity is always unexpected and unwelcome. It is an intruder and a thief, and yet in the hands of God, adversity becomes the means through which His supernatural power is demonstrated.

The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.

James Stockdale and what is now known as the Stockdale Paradox comes from his experience as a prisoner of war for seven years during the Vietnam War. The Stockdale Paradox, made famous in Jim Collins’...

We all know people who have been made much meaner and more irritable and more intolerable to live with by suffering: it is not right to say that all suffering perfects. It only perfects one type of pe...

God never calls you to a task without giving you what you need to do it. He never sends you without going with you.

Psychologists tell us that one of the most difficult conditions a person can be forced to bear is light deprivation. Darkness, in fact, is often used in military captivity or penal institutions to bre...

Survival requires more than the basic biological necessities we readily acknowledge—oxygen, food, and water. It also demands something less tangible but equally vital: hope. When hope vanishes, the hu...

Of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challeng...

Hope is the power of being cheerful in the presence of circumstances we know to be desperate.

Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

The entire book of Job contradicts the common belief that good people will have lives that go well, and that if your life is going badly, it must be your fault. The Bible does not say that every diffi...

If we desire our faith to be strengthened, we should not shrink from opportunities where our faith may be tried, and therefore, through trial, be strengthened.

Get to know someone really well, and almost without fail, you will discover a person who routinely struggles to get out of bed in the morning. And not just because they’re tired. They can’t get out of...

In C. S. Lewis’ classic work Mere Christianity , the English apologist compares God’s use of adversity to walking a dog on a leash. When the dog wraps its leash around a pole and tries to move fo...

God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.

I have read that each of us experiences a relatively significant crisis on an average of once every six months or so.

It is no stretch to say that the Lord may orchestrate amazingly challenging circumstances for you and your family for the primary purpose of giving your supernatural hope and Christian contentment a p...

The etymology of certain words can profoundly enrich our understanding and experience of life. Consider the word “consolation.” Its roots lie in the Latin words “con-” meaning “ “to be ” and “solus,...

Once, when the famous missionary, Dr. David Livingstone, was in Africa, he wrote home to England requesting more workers. In reply, he received this message: We would like to send more workers to y...