faith and work on Hardship

Statistics show that 80 percent of new pastors leave the ministry within five years. A friend once remarked, “If they were able to pastor churches without people, they might last ten years.” Most past...

Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers, or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord. —Matthew Desmond, E...

I might not be the best person to be writing this.  After an eleven-year career in business in my twenties and early thirties, I’ve been an ordained pastor now for nearly twenty-seven years. There are...

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

Almighty and most merciful Father, giver of every good and perfect gift, we give you thanks for blessing us so richly with your good Word and the holy Sacraments, and supplying so abundantly all our d...

In Hillbilly Elegy the author tells of Bob, who worked with him at a tile warehouse with his girlfriend. Bob missed work once a week, was chronically late, and took many breaks each day, lasting ove...

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

Let no man be disheartened nor discouraged if he have brought a good conscience and faithful labor to the service of the Lord. Let him not think his wages the worse paid if God do mingle bodily sickne...

Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?

In spite of sorrow, loss, and pain, our course be onward still; we sow on Burmah's barren plain, we reap on Zion's hill.

Before the reward there must be labor. You plant before you harvest. You sow in tears before you reap joy.

Hence, whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.

On Christmas Eve in Tehran, house-church pastor Farshid Fatah and his family were awakened to the frightening sounds of the Iranian security police pounding at their door. After the police searched hi...

We think it's difficult to apply for jobs today, what about a hundred years ago when traveling did not mean jumping on a flight or the interstate. Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain once tra...

Heavenly Father, we remember before you those who suffer want and anxiety from lack of work. Guide the people of this land so to use our public and private wealth that all may find suitable and fulfil...

Robert C. McFarlane was a well-known businessman in the Los Angeles area. He had moved to California from Oklahoma in 1970, and within just a few days of his arrival—due to a disastrous misunderstandi...

I believe any dream worth birthing will require fierce labor to bring it forth. Some of those painful, spiritual contractions you’ve been feeling are not necessarily indicators that you are out of God...

A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

...work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental...

The story is told of a farmer in a Midwestern state who had a strong disdain for “religious” things. As he plowed his field on Sunday morning, he would shake his fist at the church people who passed b...

Robert Lupton offers insight into the complexities of human impoverishment, reminding us that in spite of our best intentions sometimes our philanthropic efforts can yield unintended consequences: “Wh...

If the Book of Job reaches across two and a half millennia to teach anything to men and women who consider themselves normal, decent human beings, it is this: Human beings are sure to wander in ignora...

Dawn grew up in a family in which she felt she had a fairly happy childhood. But in her adult years she struggled greatly with emotional, psychological, and physical maladies. She never felt a sense o...

Josephine Bakhita’s life is a testament of God’s faithfulness in the darkest circumstances. She was born in Darfur, Sudan, among the Daju people. Her first years were happy, but at age eight she was k...

Sometimes Working More Decreases Productivity Maybe we know this on some level, but how many of us actually live this way? How often do we just keep grinding away at a job even though we know that i...

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing...

I recently attended an event sponsored by Compassion International, the International Child Sponsorship Organization. The event was called “Stepping into My Shoes”. The purpose being to show children ...

How many shortcuts have been justified with the best of intentions? At the sentencing for her role in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, actress Lori Loughlin addressed the court:  “I mad...

If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.