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THE ART OF SUFFERING

By Aaron D. Conley Leave a Comment

Photo Credit: Pamela Machado @ Flickr (CC)

Over the past several years I’ve started learning from the wisdom of people who have suffered and weathered some of the roughest storms of life. These people come from backgrounds different from my own. This wisdom has brought new sets of questions for me about the nature of pain and suffering and the place of God in all of that. My understanding and experience of the liberating work of God has matured as I’ve gained a deeper sense of how the cross and resurrection relate to suffering in me and in those around me.

I grew up believing that to suffer was central to my identity as a Christian. After all, the Bible told me so. I knew all the verses about God not giving me more than I would be able to handle and about how I am supposed to rejoice in suffering because it produces endurance and makes me strong. I knew that Jesus called his disciples to take up their crosses to follow him and that I’d be blessed for suffering on his account. I even knew a little bit of the history of the earliest Christian martyrs who stood firm in their faith in the face of torture and execution. Ultimately, I thought suffering was a test brought to me by God just as God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Isaac.

I welcomed opportunities to take up my cross because I thought that it would make me a better Christian. All throughout high school I thought I was suffering when I didn’t get invited to parties or when I got up early once a year to pray around a flag pole. I put myself in these situations with zeal. But what I didn’t realize was that it was a privilege “to choose” to suffer in these ways, which, while uncomfortable, were not really suffering at all. Worst of all, since my idea of suffering was so small, I lacked empathy for my friends who were going through deaths in their family, generational poverty, and racial discrimination.

I am not sure if I missed something or if it was never taught, but I never made the connection between actual pain and suffering and the type of self-inflicted martyr-complex I developed in my youth. So when I sat with my close friend after his mom passed away from an aggressive form of cancer, or when my own marriage came to the brink of collapse, I didn’t know how to relate these experiences to the biblical and theological traditions about suffering.

Similarly, I didn’t know how to respond when another friend told me he abandoned God shortly after he almost lost his wife and first child during his wife’s labor and delivery. The image I had of suffering wasn’t big enough to account properly for painful experiences that we didn’t actively seek. So I sat silently in the full knowledge that no cookie-cutter church answer could absolve his pain.

Yet in the midst of all this suffering subtext came a fundamental misunderstanding of suffering generally and of Jesus and God specifically. Nobody likes to go through hard times, but when hardships do come, this misunderstanding of suffering may be why some people end up leaving the church or walking away from God. I see this now when people tell others who are grieving their circumstances things like, “It is God’s will,” or “God is testing you.” While trying to bring comfort, such words bite deeply into fresh wounds and communicate a theology of a disinterested God at best or of a sadistic God. In effect, those that say God directly brings pain to one’s life, make God out to be the author of evil. And with such thinking, then God’s goodness quickly goes out the window. We know that God is not evil, as Psalm 100:5 says, “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” But how do we reconcile these opposing perspectives and truly help one another in the face of pain and suffering?

Learning to listen to and be with others who are suffering helped expand the narrow category of suffering I held in my youth. Learning that not all suffering is the same and that there are differences between types of pain helped broaden my understanding. I grew immensely from the writings of Womanist ethicist Emilie M. Townes, like her book A Troubling in My Soul (Orbis Books, 1993). In this book, Townes talks about suffering from the perspective of her own experiences as a black woman within the United States. She recounts a history of oppression and marginalization that she and her community have endured. She rejects the theology that claims God brought slavery, segregation, and their fallouts “for a reason.” What kind of a God would inflict those horrors on a covenanted community? These horrors are the result of a real evil, to be sure, but an evil that comes from a dominant society whose values and institutions promote a life-denying ideology.

As I understand Townes, the God who heard the cry of the Israelites in Egypt and who delivered them from their oppression is not a God with some poorly designed plot to run generations of people into the ground. This is a God who hears our cries and brings liberation. What is more, God’s work through Jesus is the supreme act of justice, which fully demonstrates God’s victory over evil. With Jesus’ victory, the Christian community is liberated to find wholeness. This wholeness is referred to as living in the “New Jerusalem,” and it is directly aimed at the here and now on both personal and community levels with respect to our individual spirits and the church in society.

[bctt tweet=”My idea of suffering was so small, I lacked empathy.”]

But freedom from the forms of oppression experienced by the Israelites or by blacks in the United States required people partnering with God actually to do something about their conditions. However reluctant Moses may have been, he still went to Pharaoh, and the Israelites uprooted themselves from their deplorable, albeit familiar, predictability of life by venturing out into the desert. On both accounts, it took courage: courage to leave Egypt and courage in the midst of their suffering to trust that God had not left them and that God would transform them out of their suffering.

But for most of us with more privileged backgrounds who have never known this kind of oppression, we still experience the chaos of broken families, drug addictions, illnesses, and death. I may concede that God worked out the liberation of the Israelites but then doubt that this same liberation applies to me. After all, the wounds are open, the sting is unbearable, and I can’t catch my breath. Townes responds to the rift between large and small scale liberation with a helpful distinction between pain and suffering. Drawing from writer and activist Audrey Lourde, Townes notes that pain is inevitable and everyone experiences it. While pain is real, it is dynamic, meaning that it moves and changes. The dynamic aspect of pain allows us to move through the stages of grief, for example, and is what can move us towards change, growth, and transformation when a person courageously passes through it.

Suffering, on the other hand, is stagnant. It is “unmetabolized” pain. Suffering is pain that has gotten stuck in a feedback loop of sorts and never moves towards transformation or wholeness. It is reactive and life draining and, short of outright despair, one’s only tactic for survival simply is to endure it. Suffering often leads to oppression on the level of the Israelites in Egypt during those four hundred years, and oppression is sinful in every respect because through it some people are excluded from the privileges and wholeness of life.

Emilie Townes goes on to explain that her community historically experienced, and continues to experience, oppression and suffering as a result of the dominant White ideologies and racialized social policies. But the reality of Jesus’ resurrection provides a way out from accepting suffering as the way it is or the way it is supposed to be. The resurrection is God’s way of breaking the feedback loop of suffering. By courageously partnering with God, the possibility becomes open to move beyond suffering to pain and renewal. “The resurrection is God’s breaking into history,” Townes proclaims, “to transform suffering into wholeness—to move the person from victim to change agent.”

[bctt tweet=”The resurrection is God’s way of breaking the feedback loop of suffering.”]

In the face of personal pain and large scale suffering and oppression in society, Christians are given the gift of the resurrection. This gift tells Christians that death does not have the final word, even in the worst of circumstances. The resurrection is the culmination of so many stories of pain and suffering occurring throughout the Hebrew scriptures. Like Noah’s rainbow, it is a promise that wholeness is possible, even though the floodwaters keep the land hidden.

Two language translations are helpful to better understand wholeness. In Hebrew, tamim is the word we most often render in English as “wholeness.” The word refers to something brought to completion—to be whole was to be complete, without impairment, and without defect. To be whole is to be repaired so that you lack nothing, and what needs repair other than something that is broken? Move over now and look at the Latin word salvus, from which we get our word “salvation.” Salvus is the act of mending something that’s been broken, much like we would put an antibiotic salve on an open wound before putting on a bandage. Christian promises of salvation, then, are more than merely the pie in the sky that you get to eat after you die. Christian promises of salvation are for the real healing of real wounds.

Christian salvation is something we participate in for ourselves, for our fellow sisters and brothers, and for the rest of the broken world. This is where theologian James Cone’s voice added to my understanding of pain, suffering, and Christian life. Cone’s most recent book is called The Cross and the Lynching Tree. In it, he brings Christians in the U.S. face to face with the theological significance of our nation’s lynching trees as a symbol of Jesus’ death on a Roman cross. In the first century, Romans reserved the punishment of crucifixions for threatening and deeply political crimes. The cross was an instrument of fear and terror and was employed symbolically to control the population by continually reminding everyone who held the locus of power. The lynching tree served almost the exact same function in our society as over 5000 men, women, and children were strung up on trees between 1890 and the 1920s alone. After the civil war and the abolition of slavery, “God-fearing” whites, primarily in the South, used lynching to remind blacks that whites were still in control. For over a half-century, blacks lived in the shadow of the lynching tree. To live in the shadow of the cross, as the Romans intended, or the lynching tree really was to live in a world where people were not allowed to be whole. Jesus’ death on that intimidating Roman cross and our claim of his resurrection transform the symbol. What was once a symbol of frightening death, has now become a symbol of freedom.

When I first read through this book I kept asking myself, “Why did Cone and members of his Christian community remain people of faith, and why didn’t they just leave the entire religion of their former slave-holders behind?” After all, it is reported that whites would interrupt their Sunday morning church service to participate in a lynching, only to resume their service after the lynching was over. I sat with these questions for a long time until I realized how deeply embedded the very questions are in my thin understanding of suffering.

How might we as Christians better face up to pain and suffering as a total body of Christ? How can we rejoice in our sufferings as Romans 12:12 instructs when I get to enjoy society’s many privileges at the expense of others? Part of an answer comes by learning how to see the interrelationships between how I live my life and how others live theirs. For me, it required learning to sit at the feet of marginalized people before I found true empathy. It required a new understanding of a God who walks alongside the downtrodden and works things towards liberation and wholeness because there is suffering, not by using suffering.

Cone expresses that it was not an option for him and his black Christian community in rural Arkansas to give up hope in a God who promised to deliver the church from oppression. Cone’s theology is such that God is the God of the oppressed, and that means that God is fighting on his behalf to make things whole again. Such assurance brings the necessary splinter of hope. And when this splinter of hope finds the support of an empathetic community willing to walk towards wholeness, we are empowered to move towards transformation. Then, with this transformation, we join back in with others and continually work to realize what it truly means to live in the New Jerusalem.

THE ART OF SUFFERING - New Identity Magazine

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New Identity | Exploring Faith
We're happy to announce that the Fall/Winter 2020 We're happy to announce that the Fall/Winter 2020 Issue is out today! There are some great articles inside that we hope you'll love! Enjoy! 🤗 #linkinbio⁠
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Prayer isn’t about making the things we selfishl Prayer isn’t about making the things we selfishly want happen; it’s about making us want what God wants.⁠
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✍🏽: @sarahjoysly in "Prayer - The Alignment of Our Souls With God"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
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“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it th “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” – Haldir⁠
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In Lothlorien, Haldir is encouraging a downcast Fellowship with a glimpse of the larger story in which they find themselves. His words reflect the apostle Paul’s encouragement to the church, that we “do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13). For there is a form of grief from which there is no recovery – one in which there is no resurrection of the dead. If death is the final word, then we must suffer grief without hope, grief that diminishes our love for life because of the crushing weight of the loss we’ve experienced. But Tolkien believed that death was not the end; therefore, we may experience the beautiful juxtaposition in our own lives of deep sorrow mixed with rivers of joy. Instead of crippling us, our grief may actually help to cultivate in our character the virtues of faith, hope, and love that are necessary to continue to carry our heaviest burdens. ⁠
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✍🏽: @slimkeman in "Memorable Middle Earth"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
#faithhopelove #lotr #thefellowshipofthering #thelordoftherings #middleearth
The Bible stresses that despite our differences we The Bible stresses that despite our differences we are called to love each other above our political positions. “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians 3:12-14). You may feel like how politics and religion intersect in the public sphere communicate the exact opposite of this, and you’d be right. Media outlets report drama and conflict. Gracious and loving political opponents are not newsworthy.⁠
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✍🏽: Matthew Hamilton in "Our Identity In Christ Is Always Greater"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
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#politics #voting #love #loveyourneighbor #loveyourneighbornotmattertheirpolitics
The trees, with their bark, the skin of the forest The trees, with their bark, the skin of the forest, with its scars and wrinkles, lean toward me, and brush me with their limbs. The leaves beg me to examine their veins. “Have you seen this?” Each different, but each spectacular. The infinite busy creatures. The carpet of green, the dome of blue.⁠
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A few moments later, I feel like an amazing creature in a world amazingly made. I feel the astounding power of God, where the smallest thing around me, a leaf, an ant, is more complicated, and alive and amazing than anything humanity has ever thought of.⁠
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Really, there is nothing like it. The author C.S. Lewis noted that the best place to take a non-believing scientist or a real thinker is nature.  Eventually the noise of God in nature is deafening.⁠
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Once you’re in that place, just a few minutes into your walk, your mouth will hardly be able to keep from pouring out praise to God. It becomes so easy. Connecting to God like that, in praise, as a consequence of observing nature, is so freeing and so empowering that you will return to your office balanced and ready, clear headed and encouraged.⁠
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The prayer that most blesses God, most blesses the one who prays it. And there is almost no easier way than from within the sanctuary of nature, which itself raises up its branches to him in prayer with every sunrise.⁠
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✍🏽: Tom Koel in "Muting The Noise of the World - Deconstructing The Prayer Hike for City Dwellers"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
📷: Photo by Lum3n from Pexels⁠
#prayerhike #prayerworks #prayandpraise #prayerwalk #timewithgod #prayerchangesthings #heispraiseworthy #faithjourney
Each person comes to a Bible passage with his own Each person comes to a Bible passage with his own culture, language, and historical understanding. Sometimes we use these to interpret the Bible, but the hard work of bible study requires that you get rid of those things and interpret the passage by allowing it to speak for itself in its own language, cultural context, and historical background. In other words, interpretation is hard work because you are trying to to discover what the passage meant to its (original) audience 2000 years ago (even though we are reading it today). ⁠
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✍🏽: @the_christopherscott in "How Anyone Can Study The Bible"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
#biblestudy #biblestudytools #growingingod #godsword #spendingtimewithgod #biblejournaling #holybible #christianliving #biblescriptures #dailybiblereading
Everything we do should be done for the ultimate e Everything we do should be done for the ultimate enjoyment of God. For instance, our enjoyment of a loving relationship with our spouse is a reflection of our relationship with God, and is therefore something God uses in order for us to better understand his love and how we can love him better.⁠
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This entails that God has given us the Bible as a means to an end. The point of reading the Bible is to come to enjoy God better and more fully. It might seem odd, or even a little sacrilege to think of the Bible as a means to an end. This is because we rightly think of the Bible as holy or sacred. But, it is not God. It is holy and sacred insofar as it is the word of God, given to us so we can better understand who God is. ⁠
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By reading Scripture we learn more about God, his work in the world, his plan for us, and his expectations for us. This is one of the means God has provided for us to enjoy him more. In fact, St. Augustine of Hippo believed that if a Christian could hypothetically enjoy God perfectly in this life, that they would no longer need to read the Bible. Of course because we will not come to love God perfectly in this life, reading, meditating on, and yes, memorizing scripture, will regularly be a source of knowledge that help us to love God more. However, Augustine wants his readers to remember, that knowledge is not the goal for reading the Bible.⁠
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✍🏽: Jeffery Porter in "How A Roman Bishop Changed The Way I Read The Bible"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
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#biblereading #heartknowledge #
People with unbelieving hearts only seek after wha People with unbelieving hearts only seek after what prospers them. Apart from Jesus, we set in motion lives filled with harm, with no hope and no future. A person can only have hope and a future when life is lived out for Christ. We get light through reading the Bible, prayer, and fellowship with other Christians. This light of life can be obtained through an open line of communication with the one who gives it—Jesus. Apart from him, life can appear meaningless. Our purpose in life is to glorify God with who we are and what we have. –Steven Butwell⁠
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"No one who trusts in you will ever be disgraced, but disgrace comes to those who try to deceive others." –Psalm 25:3 NLT⁠
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✍🏽: Steven Butwell in "The Light Christ"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
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What’s your favorite article in the new issue? F What’s your favorite article in the new issue? Follow the link in our bio to read it online or download it free to your tablet. ⁠
Even as God demonstrated love by sending Jesus to Even as God demonstrated love by sending Jesus to die on the cross to take punishment for our sins, God reminded people of the importance of fearing him. God is not only our savior, comforter, and friend who promises to be with us always (Hebrews 13:5; Matthew 28:20), but also the most powerful being in the universe. There is a place for the right kind of fear—the reverential awe and respect—in our lives.⁠
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✍🏽: Délice Williams in "Fear The Lord?" Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
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Like the Psalmist, John describes Jesus as God’s Like the Psalmist, John describes Jesus as God’s Word who brings light and life to the darkness. Jesus is God’s Word that comes to us, to those who are dwelling in darkness. In fact, this is exactly what Jesus declares his mission to be in John 12:46: “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.” This Light and Darkness imagery pervades the gospel of John. People love darkness because they don’t want their actions, thoughts, motives to be exposed by the light. But the truth is that deep down we need (and want) to be seen. We want to be loved despite our dirtiest deeds and foulest feelings. We need to restore the relationship that Adam and Eve once had with God–complete openness, and deep love–but we can’t do it on our own. Only God can (and did through Jesus) bring that relationship back.⁠
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✍🏽: Brandon Hurlbert in "The Light of God's Love"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
📷: Photo by Emre Kuzu from Pexels⁠
In John 15:1 Jesus says that God is the gardener a In John 15:1 Jesus says that God is the gardener and he prunes every branch that does not produce fruit. A person stuck in his or her ways of sin is like a prickly shrub growing a lot of branches with no fruit. These branches must be removed so good fruit can grow. In the same way as a bush is unable to prune itself, a person who is living in sin is unable to remove all the unfruitful branches in life. Paul described this condition in chapter seven of Romans when he called himself a wretched man and realized only Jesus can change him.⁠
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Jesus provides the essential elements for growth; he gives us his Word (the Bible) for fertilizer, other believers for sunshine, and the Holy Spirit for water. When our roots begin to receive this new water, sunshine, and fertilizer, new branches begin to grow. This time the branches are not prickly bushes, but beautiful new branches adorned with the fruit of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self control,” (Galatians 5:22). Our old acquaintances will marvel at who we have become. When we allow God to be the gardener, he will shape us into his design.⁠
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✍🏽: Delbert Teachout in "God The Gardener"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
📷: Photo by Timothy Grindall from Pexels
As new creations, those who have been forgiven by As new creations, those who have been forgiven by and reconciled to Jesus, we now have the task of being reconciled to each other. As Christians, we are not just called to forgive others in our hearts but keep them at an arm’s length away. No, we are called to be of one heart and one mind (Acts 4:32) with our brothers and sisters—we are called to be reconciled.⁠
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✍🏽: Brandon Hurlbert in "Repairing Broken Bridges"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
We are faced with a challenge: to make God the cen We are faced with a challenge: to make God the center and purpose of our lives in a world of demands. God asks us to listen for his voice, and it’s no wonder why he chose to speak to Elijah in a “still, small voice” in 1 Kings 19:12-13. He doesn’t always shout at us because he wants us to choose to listen, to put other things aside so that all of our focus is towards discerning his will in the specifics of our lives. We have his will for us in general, as communicated in the Bible, which is to make disciples of all nations, to glorify the one true God, to serve no other gods, to love our neighbors as ourselves, etc., but sometimes we need to figure out how those general plans fit the specifics of our lives. Hearing God’s voice is part of how we relate to him, but in those moments of uncertainty, quieting ourselves becomes even more important.⁠
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✍🏽: @sarahjoysly in "Listening For A Whisper"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
📷: Photo by Jara from Pexels⁠
Imagine if every Christian started praying to God Imagine if every Christian started praying to God and asking for him to bless us with gifts of encouragement for the sake of the world around us. The Church would make an immediate impact on the lives of people.⁠
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✍🏽: @lukegeraty in "The Gift of Encouragement from the Great Encourager"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
📷: Photo by Lum3n from Pexels⁠
Everything sad will come untrue because we are not Everything sad will come untrue because we are not doomed to be forever parted with those we love, nor will our souls simply turn to dust and fade with the memory of those we leave behind.⁠
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✍🏽: @slimkeman in "Memorable Middle Earth - Why I'm Always Tolkien In Movie Quotes"  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com⁠ by visiting the link in our bio and tapping on the image.⁠
📷: Photo by Dirk Förster from Flickr
"Remembering God's promises and his faithfulness a "Remembering God's promises and his faithfulness as a community will help us to endure our sorrows for the night, for joy comes in the morning." @slimkeman from his article The Beauty of Community & The Beast of Isolation 🌤 Can you name some of God's promises that keep you encouraged and grounded? We'd love to hear in the comments below - and just maybe it might be the hope someone else is needing right now! 🤗⁠
“Every night I lie in bed, the brightest colors “Every night I lie in bed, the brightest colors fill my head. A million dreams are keepin’ me awake. I think of what the world could be, a vision of the one I see. A million dreams is all it’s gonna take. A million dreams for the world we’re gonna make.” ⁠
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As P.T. Barnum sings these words to Charity in the beautiful montage of their young lives, we are captivated by the hope that they share, the possibilities of their bright future, and the chance of their love overcoming the wall between privilege and poverty that keeps them apart. The Greatest Showman asks us to wrestle with the quest for the holy grail of our modern world: success and happiness. ⁠
What is the good life? If a million of our wildest dreams came true, would we truly be happy?⁠
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In Jesus, we find a man who invites us into his presence with these words: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He is the only one who can fill “the infinite abyss” of desire in our souls. When you have fully devoted yourself and your dreams to your Creator, you will discover that “everything you ever want” and “everything you ever need” is “right here in front of you” in Christ Jesus.⁠
{Steve Limekman}⁠
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✍🏼: by @slimkeman in “The Greatest Showman”  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com by clicking on the link in our bio ⁠
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📸: from newidentitymagazine
Every day in sub-Saharan Africa, one child in ten Every day in sub-Saharan Africa, one child in ten under the age of five dies of a preventable cause, and nearly every day in America eight in ten adults consume coffee. What do these numbers have to do with each other? A lot, according to the One Cup Project, which is using America’s love for coffee to reduce the number of children dying in Africa by converting coffee profits into life-saving aid.⁠
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The One Cup Project started in 2010, when Christian Kar, the founder of an award-winning Seattle-based coffee company, partnered with the Christian humanitarian aid organization, World Vision.Remarkably, every dollar spent on One Cup Coffee generates a dollar of aid for Africa.⁠
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Buy some coffee, put up a post on your Facebook page, ask your church, local café, or workplace to change their coffee, or run a One Cup Fundraiser. In doing so, you just may help hurting people find healing, hope, and life. Change the world for the better, one cup at a time.⁠
{Thame Fuller}⁠
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✍🏼: @thamefuller in “One Cup Project”  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com by clicking on the link in our bio or click on this link to take you directly to the One Cup website: https://onecup.org/our-story/⁠
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📸: by @AftaPuta from Pexels
When someone accepts Jesus, they leave their old p When someone accepts Jesus, they leave their old priorities behind and make Jesus the center of their life. Jesus calls each of us to share the good news with the world. He came to give living water to a thirsty world, and we have the honor and privilege of sharing his message by the power of the Holy Spirit (John 7:37-39).⁠
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The most important thing you can do is enter each conversation with a posture of prayer. Pray for the person you’re sharing with, that God would open their heart to accept him. Pray that God would give you the words to say. And a loving way to say them.⁠
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Expect God to work in your relationship and use you to share Jesus through your friendship in his own timing. No matter how long you have been a believer, you can share Jesus with the confidence that he is with you and that he will use you for his glory.⁠
{Eric Gulley}⁠
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✍🏼: Eric Gulley in “Sharing Your Faith”  Continue reading at newidentitymagazine.com by clicking on the link in our bio ⁠
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📸: by @OliverSjostrom from Pexels
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