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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Write an INSPIRATIONAL or DEVOTIONAL piece (04/26/07)
“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.
Philippians 4:12 (NIV)


It is possible to be happy as a clam apart from God’s blessing. Have you ever done that? Have you ever been guilty of mistaking happiness for blessing? So many times we think that when we are happy, because things are going smoothly in our lives, that we are blessed. Then conversely, we feel that when we are unhappy, and facing trials with each step, we must not be living squarely in the middle of God’s will. What about when you don’t get the job you applied for, or the house you’ve had on the market just won’t sell? What about when you seem to come up against adversity at every turn, and those well-meaning folks just shake their heads, and say that God doesn’t seem to be blessing you? What then?

Perhaps at those times when we struggle, we need to remember the apostle Paul who was blessed through adversity. There were times when Paul spent more days behind bars than not. What would the head-shakers say about Paul? Would they say that he was out of God’s will? I believe that Paul came to understand, during those days of persecution, that blessing was not necessarily related to his own happiness. What about Stephen? He was stoned to death. Was he not blessed of God? It is hard for us not to wonder when things aren’t going “our way” if God has just left us hanging out on a limb. Remember, that there are times in life when we are more blessed out on that limb, than on our happiest of days.
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Jan Ackerson
05/06/07
Wonderful little devotional, tight and full of truth.
Lisa Holloway
05/10/07
:) Don't most of us make this mistake from time to time? But then it happened in Jesus's day, too, as with the blind man: "Who sinned? This man or his parents?" They also assumed that affliction = spiritual problems, forgetting that it is sometimes through our afflictions that God shapes us into the persons he needs us to be.