Saturday, May 1, 2010

FOLLOWING JESUS 6

John 21:18-19 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. (19) This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me.

THE CALL STILL COMES LOUDLY FROM CHRIST FOLLOW ME:
SOMETIMES WE MUST FOLLOW JESUS TO THE GARDEN OF SORROW

When I was a young man I had a terrible time dealing with death. I could barely handle the death of a friend or loved one and I really had a hard time going to funerals. My dad really was concerned about that when I surrendered to the ministry. I won't go into details but God used some things to toughen me up to where I could minister to others in their time of grief and I could still handle my own grief.
Just a note to everyone- Remember at a funeral the one who preaches the funeral, those who are there to comfort you, and others in your family are many times grieving too.
We are taught so many things during times of sorrow. Many books have been written on dealing with sorrow and loss and those authors have certainly dealt with the subject much better and much more specific than I can. One thing we should remember is that sometimes grieving and sorrow are a learning process for all of us. As you go through times of grief keep your heart open for God to teach you during the process.
In the garden of sorrow our hearts are made tender. Can you imagine how hard and callous we would become if we didn't have our hearts broken every once in a while. This dawned on me early in my ministry. The best way to keep this from happening is to do our very best to keep our hearts tender and compassionate at all times.

Please feel free to contact me by email at

shilohkosciusko@gmail.com with questions, comments or even suggestions for further devotional studies.


If you know of someone new to the Kosciusko area and would like for our church to visit them please let us know. Our prayers are that this devotional ministry will be an outreach to bring people into a closer relationship with Jesus. I do appreciate you taking the time to read these devotionals and please keep us in your prayers.

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