Jo-Jo's health
Jo-Jo sent out a report on her cancer to the friends and relatives who are praying for her and the family. It was not optimistic, from the human, earthly, standpoint. The cancer has spread, despite medicine's best efforts, and this has been a long hard battle for her and Harry. She's been given so many more days with him and her family than anyone would've thought, due to treatment and past remissions. But it looks like it's almost time for her to lay aside her earthly tabernacle and to be clothed with "the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." For this she is groaning, as the Lord's kids all will groan as we are burdened. She is confident and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:1-8).
A friend of hers replied with today's devotional from Our Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers:
"Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us." Romans 8:37
Paul is speaking of the things that might seem likely to separate or wedge in between the saint and the love of God; but the remarkable thing is that nothing can wedge in between the love of God and the saint. These things can and do come in between the devotional exercises of the soul and God and separate individual life from God; but none of them is able to wedge in between the love of God and the soul of the saint. The bedrock of our Christian faith is the unmerited, fathomless marvel of the love of God exhibited on the Cross of Calvary, a love we never can and never shall merit. Paul says this is the reason we are more than conquerors in all these things, super-victors, with a joy we would not have but for the very things which look as if they are going to overwhelm us.
The surf that distresses the ordinary swimmer produces in the surf-rider the super-joy of going clean through it. Apply that to our own circumstances, these very things - tribulation, distress, persecution, produce in us the super-joy; they are not things to fight. We are more than conquerors through Him in all these things, not in spite of them, but in the midst of them. The saint never knows the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation, but because of it - "I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation," says Paul.
Undaunted radiance is not built on anything passing, but on the love of God that nothing can alter. The experiences of life, terrible or monotonous, are impotent to touch the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[From "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers, March 7]
A friend of hers replied with today's devotional from Our Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers:
"Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us." Romans 8:37
Paul is speaking of the things that might seem likely to separate or wedge in between the saint and the love of God; but the remarkable thing is that nothing can wedge in between the love of God and the saint. These things can and do come in between the devotional exercises of the soul and God and separate individual life from God; but none of them is able to wedge in between the love of God and the soul of the saint. The bedrock of our Christian faith is the unmerited, fathomless marvel of the love of God exhibited on the Cross of Calvary, a love we never can and never shall merit. Paul says this is the reason we are more than conquerors in all these things, super-victors, with a joy we would not have but for the very things which look as if they are going to overwhelm us.
The surf that distresses the ordinary swimmer produces in the surf-rider the super-joy of going clean through it. Apply that to our own circumstances, these very things - tribulation, distress, persecution, produce in us the super-joy; they are not things to fight. We are more than conquerors through Him in all these things, not in spite of them, but in the midst of them. The saint never knows the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation, but because of it - "I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation," says Paul.
Undaunted radiance is not built on anything passing, but on the love of God that nothing can alter. The experiences of life, terrible or monotonous, are impotent to touch the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[From "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers, March 7]