Faithful Yet Changing: The Church in Challenging Times

The Church in Challenging Times Mark S. Hanson. FAITHFUL yet CHANGING The Church in Challenging Times Bishop Mark S. Hanson Augsburg Books ^r.
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What steps will you take to cultivate an attitude of thanksgiving and praise in your life? You are faithful to me and I give thanks and praise. Give me a thankful heart in every situation I face. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" 1 Thessalonians 5: As you pass through adverse circumstances, especially for prolonged periods, your spirit, soul, and body can be affected. Your spirit is the core of your being, and so the previous six devotions focused on building you spiritually. But there other important aspects of your life that you must pay attention to as you pass through hard times.

When you pursue life balance, you nurture all aspects of your life, including the spiritual, social, emotional, and physical domains. They are all inter-related. So take steps to take care of your physical health including good nutrition, and getting adequate rest and exercise. Socially, building strong connections is essential. Promote healthy, nurturing relationships with your family and in your church. Why not join a small group ministry in your church? Here, you can connect, grow in your faith, and experience a sense of belonging. You also get opportunities to reach out to others.

Nurture your emotional well-being through reducing your stress levels. Change your self-talk internal conversations to positive, self-enhancing ones that are in line with God's promises in his Word. With your faith at the center of your pursuit of life balance, you are more flexible to adapt to challenging situations. You will experience God's peace and spiritual and personal growth, as you pass through tough times. This leads to balance in the aspects of your life in differing seasons. What steps will you take to bring balance in your life as you pass through adverse situations?


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I recommit myself to you and open my heart for you to work in my life: As you take the seven steps, affirm that your faith can take you through hard times. Recognize that you have already started your journey of personal and spiritual growth and renewal, then enlarge your horizons on what God is doing in your life. You can be like Joseph was, in his slavery and prison experiences, he got better instead of bitter. You too can gain a new perspective and grasp divine opportunities even in hard places.

Then you can say, like Joseph, what was meant for evil, God used it for good. He said to his brothers:. In the end, you can bounce back from adversity because your faith in God took you through.

Life Is Hard, But God Is Good!

Your testimony will encourage others because they will see how God brought you through hard times into a good place. Sign in or sign up and post using a HubPages Network account. Comments are not for promoting your articles or other sites. Hi Jubal, I am happy that my article encourages you. I am standing with you in praying believing that God, Jehovah Jireh, will supply all your needs and you will receive the job you are seeking.

God richly bless you for this piece. Premjoy, I thanks for your comments and I am happy that my hub encourages. I pray that God will use you in a special way in the ministry that he has called you to. Also, I am confident that God will provide all you need to complete the work that he gives you to do.

First a fall I would like to thank God also you all It is really encourage to in my heart thank you for so wonderful message.

One thing I very humblely request to you all please pray for my future plan for to do Gods ministry may I get blessing and helps from God. Many noble qualities in your Hub.

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I will have to come back and read it again to jot down some info I know you shared do much useful information! What a wonderful hub. Very well-written, and you offer so many tips on how to keep our faith during a hard times. Thank you so much Faith Reaper. I agree, it is so important to stay in constant fellowship with God, our Father who cares for us. It is easy for us to focus on the situation so that it causes us to take our focus off him and so we neglect our relationship with him.

Your weekly devotions are inspiring and very helpful. For me, it is praying throughout the day and staying in that constant communication with my Lord. When my eyes first open in the morning, I praise God and that is my prayer and ask for protection during the day and my hour commute to and fro and for my family. Once I truly cast all of my cares to Him, I am in complete peace.

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You want to move forward with a heart that is open to change, and responsive to God's Word and the Holy Spirit Focus Question: Meditate on God's Word. Importantly, God gave Joshua strict instructions, and simply outlined, Joshua was supposed to: Consistently meditate on God's Word, that is, know his Word and keep his heart on them. Carefully obey the instructions of the Word of God, and not just be a hearer of the Word but a doer. Facing Challenging Situtions What is the most challenging situation you are presently facing?

Ask the Father in Jesus' Name John Pray in faith Mark Believe that what you ask your Father for, based on the promises in his Word, you have received.

How to Trust God in the Difficult Seasons of Change

Forgive others Mark Unforgiveness can hinder your faith and block you from receiving what God has for you. Pray in the Spirit Romans 8: The Holy Spirit helps you in prayer. He is the Helper, so depend on him to enable you as you pray effectively. Build Up Your Faith in God. Coping with Hard Times When you face hard times, what is your most effective way of coping during those times?

Naomi experienced loss and had to deal with changes.

Praying Meditating on God's Word Thanksgiving and praising god Building up my faith Pursuing life balance Taking care of myself Building healthy connections and a support system A combination of all the above See results. Offer Praise and Thanksgiving. Praise is beneficial because you: Instead of trying to avoid suffering, seek to learn and grow through it. Keep in mind that God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy, because holiness has eternal value.

Instead of trying to avoid suffering, ask God to use it to accomplish good purposes in your life. Follow your faith , not your feelings. Ask God how He wants to use your hardship to draw you closer to Him and accomplish more of the mission He has given you for your life on Earth. Hardships may come into your life because of: Choose to repent of your sins and learn from your mistakes so you can enjoy a better life. If you discern that you are suffering for the sake of following where Jesus leads you, pray for the strength to continue to follow Him, and know that He will reward you in heaven your faithfulness.

But this is our time, this is our place, and this is our time of testing and challenge. In these kinds of times, it is critical that we remind ourselves of the importance of civility in our public discourse and presentations with the wider public. Here I am concerned with our tone of voice when we write and speak in public. What we say in public matters. Being a person who speaks in a civil tone and in a civil manner is a virtue.

Practicing civility is a virtue. Civility is not a wimp word. The American religious historian Martin Marty put it this way: Civility is not just a matter of good manners and pulling our punches. Civility and kindness do not mean passivity. It is instead a matter of showing fundamental respect and decency for the people we are engaging in the public arena. In order to be persuasive, even with firmly held convictions, we must resist the temptations to respond in an emotive fashion and instead respond in ways that are winsome and appealing.

We have no reason to be fearful or sullen or mean-spirited. Why do I emphasize this? Because I could give you illustrations of people I have known over the years in the Christian community who are not taken seriously because of the tone of their voice, their words, and their very body language. We have a duty to be respectful to those we disagree with in the public arena. It is, quite simply, the will of God that we not kill each other over our differences concerning what the will of God is. We are always living in a time of transition. And so we are today. We have this tendency to see our era as the worst era in all of history.

Times may be growing dark—but times have been dark since the Fall in the Garden of Eden. We are not, and will not, be the losers in history.

The arc of history is long, but we know with confidence how it ends. And so there is comfort in the midst of all this transition: And so for those of us whose primary allegiance is to the City of God, we do well to remember that every homeland is a foreign country and every foreign country is a homeland.

We are to seek the welfare of the city, as Jeremiah says, because in its welfare we will also find our welfare.

What Now? Faithful Living in Challenging Times | C.S. Lewis Institute

This is our place of pilgrimage at this time until the future City of God comes. Until we reach that final destination, we must learn how to sing the songs of Zion in this our foreign land. Our task is to bless our neighbors, cultivate Shalom, and continue to remind people of the wonderful news of the gospel especially since we will need to be poised to receive the wounded who will be the inevitable victims of our current cultural malaise and dysfunctions. Let us continue to keep doing all the good we can, in all the many ways we can, confident in our strong faith in our loving and merciful God.

Knowing this will keep us from panicking; it will keep us from screaming, from freaking out, or from caving in to the pressures that surround us on every side. And so we must do our various duties faithfully while living in exile, fully aware and confident that the final consummation of history and true justice will come with the restoration of the entire universe to its original, created glory.

Commission on International Religious Freedom. Evangelicals and Fundamentalists Confront the World, and editor of numerous other books on faith and public life. Cromartie is a graduate of Covenant College and holds an M.

Login User login Username: Create new account Request new password. Lewis Institute connect with us: Faithful Living in Challenging Times. He said something I have never forgotten: Here is what he says: The great church historian and patristics scholar Robert Louis Wilken put it this way: So, what are we to be doing now?