COUNT IT ALL JOY!

"Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow." [James 1:2-3 (NLT)]

I was serving as a pastor at my first charge in the rural Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia about an hour and a half drive from downtown DC where I had lived for eight years. For nearly a year I had been living in a parsonage full of black mold and I was very sick and despondent, exhausted and frustrated. 

The allergic reactions to the mold triggered restlessness and upper respiratory ailments and I was too new to the ministry to wade through the procedures and red tape between the leadership of each of the three churches and the Annual Conference Cabinet members and bishop who I answered to as well. 

For several weeks I kept hearing the Lord say, "Count it all joy," but I was too irritated and Whitney to even look up the passage.  When I finally resigned myself to finding out more about what the Holy Spirit was trying to get through to me in the first chapter of James' Epistle, I was even more annoyed.

I fussed at the Lord and whined even more for a while until He admonished me with, "I can't talk to you when you are fussing like this."

"Well, I'm not done yet," I pouted.

So in a similar way to what I tried to do when my kids were little and being intractable, the Lord quietly replied, "Okay. Let me know when you're ready to hear me out."

When I'm going through a rough time, sometimes it's hard to believe things will get better.  In the last ten weeks I have felt a bit like a prize fighter in a series of challenge matches where no sooner is one challenger defeated, than another is coming down the aisle toward the ring.

The difference this time is that the challenges have not been mine exactly, but problems and turmoil facing my family members and friends. But we can still count it all joy and keep watching for how the Lord will come through and keep blessing us in the midst of turmoil.

The most important thing is to remember that the Lord will be with us as He brings us through it all. He will keep revealing His good plans and He will faithfully love, protect, nurture and provide for us and for everyone we love.

The more we look for the ways that the Lord is lovingly positive toward us, the wider we open the channels to receive His faith, love and blessings.  God is so good and so faithful.

May the Lord continue to bless and keep you and yours, Beloved. I thank God for you and am so blessed that He brought you into my life.

❤️ ❤️ ❤️