Moments in Grace

Pain can be a great purifier.  It tests us, it tries us, it reveals us to us.  Pain is often the place we find out what we are made of, what we really believe and exactly where our hope is placed. Pain is a mighty instrument of God’s grace. It is in the moments of greatest pain that we see what we are trusting in, where the foundation of our hope is bedded and exactly how deep our trust in God is. In the last year I have experienced more pain than I ever thought possible.  But in the moments of greatest pain I found out one thing:  Jesus is all I need. I found out that “my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ my righteousness, I dare not trust the sweetest frame but only trust in Jesus name.” On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand. For me the words of Psalm 23 became like bread and water.  I prayed them back to God in confession, in desperation, in faith.  I prayed them over and over, usually many, many times a day, meditating on

They say that what ever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That when you go through hardship, suffering, trial and fire, you can come out bitter or better, that the fire, it purifies. That gold, when it is put into the furnace, put under fire, it gives up its impurities, these other things inside of it, they rise to the surface to be skimmed off, leaving behind only the gold. In the Christian life, the heat of battle can purify us. In the midst of the hardest battles we are tested.  We are seen for what we are, all the impurity rising like so much waste coming from hidden places. The battle tests our hearts.  The battle reveals what we are made of.  And when we see it, it provides the opportunity to be purged of what is hindering, to shed our dead weight and become all that we need to be to fight the good fight of faith. We studied American history this year in our homeschool, and sometime in the thaw of winter into spring we studied the Winter of Valley Forge.  We read