Trials and Suffering
A Visionary Life
If you have a ‘life vision’ you are living with purpose, you are a visionary. The best visions come from God because His vision for you comes with the power to achieve fulfillment. His vision for your life places you into a company of great visionaries that have come before you, impacting their world for the better, inspiring change and bringing hope and help to all nations and people groups. Don’t settle for the ordinary life that lacks vision when God has given us an extraordinary opportunity to use our gifts and talents to fulfill His will for our lives.
God spoke long ago to those who would follow Him with a trusting heart. He predicted that they would speak of His awesome deeds one day upon the fulfillment of their vision.
“They shall speak of the might of Your awesome deeds, and I will declare Your greatness.” (Psalm 145:6)
I have received many visions from God without a clue as to how God would lead me into the fulfillment. Looking back, He has certainly performed awesome deeds on my behalf to support me and my path of fulfillment. His ways cannot be compared to our way of doing things, we must trust in His higher way.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8,9)
A vision has to move from the mind to the heart and then to reality. Small faith steps lead to cumulative results that begin to have the impact that God envisioned for us.
What vision has God given you? It’s never too late to start moving and aligning your life toward it. Submit the process to God and with His help you will see the fulfillment and discover your purpose!
“A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul…” (Proverbs 13:19a)
Gift of Compassion
Have your own trials and sufferings affected your heart of compassion towards others? Do you struggle with feeling sorrow for the sufferings or trouble of others with very little inspiration to help?
Jesus warns us about having compassion for others when at the end of our lives we will be held accountable for how we treated others. He will proclaim you ‘blessed’ by His Father to inherit the kingdom prepared for you when you live a lifestyle of compassion towards others.
“For I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed Me, I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you visited Me, I was in prison and you came to Me.” (Matthew 25:35-38)
His followers wanted to know how and when they had done these acts to Jesus and He explained that “…as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you did it to Me.” (Matthew 25:40)
For those who lacked compassion for the suffering Jesus ‘condemned’. In other words they would have no part of Jesus and were told to depart from Him, cursed into eternal fire that had been prepared for the devil and his angels. (Matthew 25:41) All because they refused to follow Jesus.
Our personal sufferings tend to turn our focus on ourselves and walking through it can block out others in their pain. Compassion is always available to us when we place our trust in God to see us through. This same compassion that we receive can be a blessing to others when extended. The world would truly be a better place.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Corinthians 1:3, 4)
The Gift of a Lifetime
Most gift-giving comes with strings attached and an expectation of reciprocation on some level. We are afforded many occasions throughout the year to give gifts to others as a gesture of affirmation, validation or reconciliation to possibly strengthen fragile relationships. In each case of gift-giving you have the giver and the receiver and at the core exists the relationship between the two.
God set the bar really high when it comes to the pure essence of gift-giving when He revealed His heart on the matter:
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17)
In other words, when God gives a gift to us it is pure with no strings attached and perfectly designed to meet our need for all time as a recipient. God’s gift is given voluntarily without any payment or expectation in return. If we accept His gift we accept without any particular effort of having to earn it.
When we receive His perfect gift we find all the affirmation, acceptance and validation that we sought in other gifts that can never meet this need. Most of all we find our relationship restored to the God who created us to be in relationship with Him.
The perfect gift is Jesus Christ our Savior, the Gift of a lifetime. What He offers can never be paid for by any effort on our part. He was sent by God to save mankind.
“…I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
Have you received the Gift of a lifetime?
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loretta j. willis, author 