The Lord just spoke to me. His words pierced my heart. What He wants me to say to you, you know in your head, but He wants you to hear it again anyway. Jesus is love, and Jesus is love to you. Since you came to the Lord, you may have experienced some great difficulties that caused you to pull back from Jesus a little bit. You thought that maybe He was displeased with you, or maybe even that He had forsaken you. Perhaps you even doubted His love for you. At the time of your fiery trial you may have allowed yourself to believe that Jesus did not care, and it changed your thoughts about Him.

I know that it is a very light thing for me to say, “Oh, but He cared. Oh, but He loved.” After all, I did not go through your trial nor did I experience your broken heart. I did not experience the feelings of abandonment and even the sense of betrayal. It is a very light thing for me to say it, but God is going to open the wellspring of understanding to you. He is going to help you come to a place of understanding His thoughts and His purposes concerning your trial, and it is going to bring much healing, if you will move ahead with Him so He can.

Even those things that seem to be by accident are really planned of the Lord. What He allows, He allows in His love. When He allows something of a seemingly grave nature to come into the life of His people, He often does it because He is seeking to prevent something worse from happening. As impossible as it is to believe that Christ would allow such a thing, He does it out of love. That thing that seemed so unreal, so dark, maybe even depraved, which caused such brokenness and anguish of heart, was really a gift. Through it, He prevented something else which would have carried a greater evil and would have done much damage. That is not always the case, but for those of you who have gone through this fiery trial that He is speaking of, this is His reasoning. He spoke this word to me earlier tonight, and this is the word of the Lord for your life. It really was out of His love, His abundant mercy and His great compassion that He allowed it. His infinite wisdom is impeccable and far beyond our understanding. We just do not always understand His ways.

I am thinking right now about Joni Eareckson Tada, who became a quadriplegic following a diving accident. I am thinking about how her accident happened, provoking her to the Lord. Not wanting to be left in her condition the rest of her life, she really sought Him for physical healing. But at this time in her life, she is willing to say that had this accident not happened to her, she probably would not have gotten saved because that is not where she was headed. She sees what befell her as God's severe mercy. The fact that she has stayed in a chair has opened up for her a worldwide ministry to a very special class of people. So for her, she really believes that she would not be saved today except by divine mercy through her accident. That may or may not be true. Maybe God told her that; I do not know. All I know is that there are those of you reading this that need to know that God knows what He is doing in your life. He wants you to pull on Him, draw close to Him, and praise Him for this terrible trial He called you to walk through for the purpose of something good. Are you willing?


I think it is an amazing thing to be told that we have been called to cycle in Christ's own victories. He is telling us that He is leading us to triumph, not in our victories, but in Christ's victories, which are of a totally different nature. If you ever thought about running a marathon and if you thought about running it to win it, then if you train, prepare yourself, run the marathon and win, then that is your victory. It was your battle, your struggle and challenge. It was predicated upon how much you were willing to prepare for it, and at the end of the line, it was your victory.

I have a friend whose name is Odeh, and he is Nigerian. Are you familiar with Mr. Clean, the strong man on the front of the cleaning bottle? Odeh looks remarkably like him. One time, I asked Odeh, “Do you work out with weights? How is it you came to look like you do?” He said, “It's genetic. My whole family looks like this.” I said, “All your brothers, huh?” He said, “Yep. All my brothers.” He looks like he has been working out with really heavy weights, but it is in his DNA.

Perhaps, for someone who has that kind of God-given natural strength and capacity, running a marathon would not seem to be a big deal. But for most, they really have to prepare themselves for the task. If you have a winning finish, then the victory is yours. Bruce Jenner said that he spent, on average, eight hours every day for four years in an intense training regimen to prepare for the triathlon. When he won, it was his victory.

However, when we walk with God, there are victories that depend only upon Him and which must be worked in and through Jesus. You co-labor together with Him; He is not going to do it for you. You will have to do it, but He will give you the grace. Where there is genuine weakness and you absolutely cannot overcome, Jesus will do something for you, perhaps in you, to help you overcome—if you are serious, that is. Most are not serious enough to provoke the Lord in that way, but if you are, He is not going to leave you ashamed. He is not going to leave you with your back against the wall and no way to get out. When it comes to spiritual growth, such as overcoming the soul and flesh, you must set your heart and mind to do it.

To be continued next week…

In Him,

Nita